MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- Asia's top security forum is discussing the creation of a new group to help prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, officials said Wednesday.

Members of the ASEAN Regional Forum have agreed to establish a nonproliferation mechanism after it was proposed by a group of countries including the United States, said Ong Teng Yong, secretary-general of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

ARF, which consists of ASEAN and 17 other countries, is holding its annual meeting on Thursday in Manila.

However, lower-level officials began discussing details of the proposed "separate body under the ARF" on Wednesday, said M.C. Abad, an ARF official.

"Although we agreed to set up such a mechanism on disarmament and proliferation, we now have to work through the usual requirement of the terms of reference for that mechanism," Ong said. "The idea is accepted but the details of the mechanism will be threshed out between now and maybe the next few months."

Abad said North Korea's nuclear weapons program is among the areas the new group can examine. ARF members include the U.S., China, North and South Korea, Russia and Japan, which are involved in six-nation talks on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

ARF earlier vowed to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other watchdogs to strengthen international nuclear and chemical safeguards and boost ARF members' national mechanisms against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The idea to create a group-wide nonproliferation body is fairly new, and a paper on the mechanism was submitted only three months ago, Ong said.

A draft statement to be issued at the end of the ARF meeting, seen by The Associated Press, welcomed North Korea's shutdown of its Yongbyon reactor this month and "its commitments to complete declaration of all nuclear programs and disablement of all nuclear facilities."

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