| |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
SEOUL : A South Korean presidential aide will visit the United States next month to explore the idea of holding a peace summit to try and finally bring an official end to the 1950s Korean war, a news report said Sunday.
Lee Hae-Chan, a former prime minister and special political advisor to President Roh Moo-Hyun, will embark on a 10-day trip to the US on May 10 for talks on holding a four-way peace summit, Yonhap news agency said.
He is to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other US officials and leaders in Washington after a stopover in Los Angeles to attend a South Korean pro-democracy ceremony, Yonhap said.
His US trip follows his visits to North Korea and China last month and it is hoped all four parties will be involved in the process.
"I believe he will exchange views on what he had felt about North Korea during his trip to Pyongyang," a Uri Party official told Yonhap, adding Lee will be travelling in his capacity as the head of the party's Committee on Northeast Asian Peace.
The official said Lee and Rice could "discuss the possibility of the four-nation summit" aimed at bringing peace on the Korean peninsula, still technically in a state of war since the 1950-1953 Korean conflict.
Lee has publicly stressed a need for the two Koreas, the US and China to hold a summit to replace an armistice with a peace pact to end the Korean War.
Accompanied by Uri Party lawmakers during his US trip, Yonhap said, Lee is also expected to meet with Christopher Hill, US chief nuclear negotiator to the six party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
The multilateral diplomatic process -- involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- has set the establishing of a regional peace regime in northeast Asia as one of its long-term goals.
Under a landmark February 13 agreement, North Korea should have shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in the presence of UN inspectors as the first step in scrapping its nuclear programmes by April 14.
But the deadline slipped by due to an unresolved dispute over North Korea's 25 million dollars frozen at a Macau bank since 2005 at the US instigation over allegations of money laundering and counterfeiting.
Pyongyang refuses to act until it gets the money back.
- AFP/ir
|
