North Korea will send a delegation to this week’s annual security conference in China, organizers said Sunday, amid fresh tensions along the North’s disputed western sea border with South Korea.

The Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue will bring together government officials, military officers, and experts from the United States, China, Japan, Russia, South and North Korea in the eastern Chinese port city of Dalian on Thursday and Friday, according to the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), one of the two hosts of the event.

The five countries are involved in long-stalled negotiations with North Korea to coax Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programs in return for political and economic concessions.

The disarmament-for-aid talks were last held in late 2008 and diplomatic efforts to resume the negotiations have been frozen since April, when North Korea defiantly launched a long-range rocket that failed moments after lift-off.

The representatives will “exchange views on the current state of the regional security and how to promote strategic trust and engagement with the goal to reduce the risk of conflict in Northeast Asia,” IGCC said on its Web site, without elaborating naming representatives. (Yonhap News)