U.S., Japan, South Korean envoys to meet on North

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top nuclear envoys from Japan, South Korea and the United States are set to meet in Washington on Friday, signaling growing concern over North Korea's plans to launch a long-range missile.

State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid announced the meetings between envoys from the three nations -- the first substantive talks on the North Korea issue since U.S. President Barack Obama took office in January.

He said U.S. diplomats responsible for the North Korea nuclear dossier would meet the Japanese and South Korean envoys separately and then all three parties could meet informally too.

Duguid had no details of the agenda but the talks are expected to focus on a long-range missile North Korea has in place for launch, which Washington and its allies say would violate U.N. sanctions imposed on the reclusive state for past weapons tests.

"A launch of any type of vehicle we would consider to be in violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions," said Duguid. "This provocative type of action would ... not go unnoticed," he told reporters.

South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator in six-nation talks on North Korea, Wi Sung-Lak, will be at the Washington meeting as well as Japan's envoy, Akitaka Saiki.

The U.S. side would be represented by Sung Kim, the new U.S. negotiator in the six-party talks, as well as the U.S. special representative on North Korea policy, Stephen Bosworth.

The planned launch is the first big test for Obama in dealing with the prickly North, whose efforts to build a nuclear arsenal have long plagued ties with Washington.

On Wednesday, a U.S. counter-proliferation official told Reuters that North Korea appeared to have positioned the rocket on its launch pad. The U.S. has spy satellites trained on the Taepodong-2 launch pad at North Korea's east coast Musudan-ri missile base.

North Korea said on Thursday that if the international community punished it for a planned missile launch it would restart a nuclear plant that makes weapons grade plutonium, and pull out of the six-nation talks that bring together the two Koreas, Japan, the United States, China and Russia.

Those talks stalled in December over disagreement on how to check the North was disabling its nuclear facilities.

Duguid repeated the U.S. view that the six-party talks were the best way to reach the goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Neither China nor Russia have representatives at the Washington talks. China has said it hopes all "relevant parties will remain restrained and calm" while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cautioned against any rash decisions.

(Editing by Frances Kerry)