South Korea has sent an invitation to North Korea for its October forum aimed at implementing President Park Geun-hye's policy for promoting peace in Northeast Asia, government officials said Thursday.

Seoul plans to hold a meeting of government and private experts to exchange views on such issues as energy security, nuclear safety and cyberspace, the main agenda items to be dealt with at the "Northeast Asia Peace Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI)," from Oct. 28 to 30, they noted.

The vision calls for countries in the region to build trust through nonpolitical cooperation in areas before coping with political and security matters.

"Seoul has invited North Korea to the forum," Noh Kwang-il, spokesman at Seoul's foreign ministry, told a regular press briefing, adding that South Korea contacted the North via a telephone message.

Seoul's government said that it has invited officials from the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Mongolia and others. But the North, which is critical of the NAPCI, has not responded to Seoul's invitation, the ministry said.

The list of participants to the forum has not been fully finalized, but Noh said that Sydney Seiler, special envoy for the six-party nuclear talks, is confirmed to attend the conference.

"As the forum is mainly supposed to deal with non-political issues, to my knowledge, there may be no discussions about the six-party talks. But a possibility of such discussions cannot be excluded," he added.

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se has said that Northeast Asia lacks a multilateral cooperative mechanism, adding that the NAPCI could be a "suitable and tailored" approach to promoting cooperation in the region. (Yonhap)