The two Koreas will meet in China next week to discuss fielding a unified team for the 2006 Asian Games.

The South's Korean Olympic Committee said Thursday that its officials would hold talks with their North Korean counterparts on the sidelines of the general assembly of the Olympic Council of Asia in Guangzhou, China next Thursday and Friday.

The two Koreas previously fielded unified teams for the World Table Tennis Championships and an international youth soccer competition, both in 1991. They also marched together in the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney and the 2004 Athens Olympics.

But the envisaged team for next year's Asiad would be the first such banding of the two nations in a multiple-event international sports competition.

Last year, South and North Korea agreed in principle to field a single team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The 15th Asian Games, held every four years, will open in Doha, Qatar in December 2006.