Asia-Pacific foreign ministers told North Korea on Monday it is high time that it stop taking actions posing threats to regional peace.

But North Korea's foreign minister, who attended an annual security meeting in Manila with them, staunchly defended his country's nuclear and missile programs as legitimate and self-defensive in nature.

"We will, under no circumstances, put the nuclear and ballistic missiles on the negotiating table...unless the hostile policy and the nuclear threat of the United States against (the North) are fundamentally eliminated," a spokesman for Ri Yong Ho quoted him as telling his counterparts in the closed-door meeting.

This year's ASEAN Regional Forum gave the ministers their first opportunity to discuss concerns about North Korea in person since it carried out its second test of an intercontinental ballistic missile about a week ago following the first on July 4.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in the meeting that there is no more time left for negotiations but it is now vital to put pressure on North Korea, according to an ASEAN diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The meeting of the 27-member security forum is one of the very few multilateral events attended regularly by North Korea, which has been trying to develop a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach the U.S. mainland, despite a series of U.N. sanctions.

The members of the forum include China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United States, the major players involved in global efforts to halt North Korea's weapons program, and the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, all of which have diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.

Almost all the top diplomats touched on the North Korean issue and demanded that the country abide by U.N. Security Council resolutions banning it from testing ballistic missile and nuclear technologies, according to a Japanese diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

While the international community has long failed to devise a means of reining in North Korea, Pyongyang has rapidly upgraded its arms capabilities, with its second ICBM, launched on July 28 in an unusual late-night test, flying as high as about 3,700 kilometers before it landed in the sea near Japan.

That was the highest altitude ever reached by a North Korean missile. Weapons analysts have said that if fired at a normal trajectory, it would have major U.S cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago within its range.

Sitting at the same roundtable together with his counterparts, Ri faced strong criticism from some of them over his country's succession of ballistic missile tests in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

A copy of a chairman's draft, seen by Kyodo News, said they were prepared to express "grave concern" and urge North Korea to immediately comply with its international obligations and exercise self-restraint for peace and stability in the world.

But Ri did not say anything strikingly different from what North Korea has been saying regarding its nuclear missile program, according to diplomats with the knowledge of their discussions.

Despite tougher sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council over the weekend, Ri, a top nuclear negotiator of North Korea before becoming foreign minister last year, also dismissed the chorus of voices calling for Pyongyang to change course.

"We have no intention to use nuclear weapons or threaten with nuclear weapons against any other country except the United States, unless it joins military action of the United States" against North Korea, Ri said, according to the transcript of his remarks at the meeting made available by the spokesman, who briefed the press at a hotel in the Philippine capital.

Ri accused the United States of trying to "internationalize" its nuclear program as a "global threat" and asserted that this kind of attempt represents the danger of "America First" policy.

He also scolded Japan and South Korea for "kowtowing blindly" to the United States and regarding it as their "mode of existence," it said.

While North Korea dominated this year's discussions of the forum, as always, many of the top diplomats said that tensions in the South China Sea and terrorism are other major security concerns in the region.