Syria and Lebanon refused to take part in multilateral meetings as long as there was no concrete progress on the bilateral level.

A Western diplomat briefed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on the proposal said it called for a multilateral meeting in which American-North Korean talks would take place on the sidelines.

This sixty-six nation multilateral meeting intended to investigate and ultimately make recommendations regarding the relationships between civilian and military uses of nuclear energy and materials.

After referring to bilateral (between two) and multilateral (among more than two) meetings to come, he talked of "progress in these fora ."

A number of multilateral meetings to address global warming have been scheduled, culminating with a conference at the end of the year to draft a treaty to combat the greenhouse effect.

President Obama's diplomatic efforts were put into practice with direct messages to the Iranian people, and through invitations to and contact with Iranian diplomats at multilateral meetings, including those on Iran's nuclear program.

He added that the United States and Japan had existing means to work out differences in front of international groups, in multilateral meetings.

Mr. Christopher is in Jakarta for four days of bilateral and multilateral meetings with the members of the Association of South East Asian Nations, or Asean.

This takes place within a well-established framework and includes multilateral meetings in Brussels, as well as bilateral contacts, but these initiatives need to be supplemented by measures to establish effective sanctions.

He also attended numerous multilateral meetings held at the UN Headquarters in New York representing Bangladesh during 1984-87.