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SEOUL - US President Barack Obama arrived Wednesday in South Korea on the last leg of his debut Asian tour, with North Korea's nuclear programme and a stalled free trade pact due to top the agenda.
Obama and his host President Lee Myung-Bak, who will hold summit talks Thursday, were expected to be largely in step on efforts to bring the North back to the six-nation nuclear disarmament talks it quit in April.
South Korea's decision to expand its aid mission to Afghanistan, and to send troops to protect its workers, will also be welcomed.
But Seoul is showing signs of impatience at US efforts to renegotiate parts of a sweeping free trade agreement (FTA) signed almost 29 months ago but still awaiting ratification.
"We hope President Obama will express a more aggressive position on the FTA and are working towards that end," Lee's spokeswoman said this month.
Communist North Korea has tested Obama's administration this year with a series of missile launches, a second atomic weapons test and a number of hostile gestures towards close US ally South Korea.
The US stations 28,500 troops in the South to deter any threat from the North and Obama is to address some of them Thursday afternoon before departing for Washington.
The navies of North and South Korea engaged in a brief but intense firefight last week after Seoul said a North Korean boat crossed the disputed sea border.
Obama said Saturday in Japan that Washington would not be "cowed" by the North's nuclear threats, but was ready to offer the isolated country a secure and prosperous future in return for full denuclearisation.
Since August, Pyongyang has put out peace feelers both to Seoul and Washington. Leader Kim Jong-Il has expressed readiness to return to the six-party forum if bilateral talks expected next month with the United States are satisfactory.
The US special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, will visit Pyongyang by the end of this year. But Washington stresses that his only goal is to bring the North back to the six-party forum, which groups the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
China and the United States want the six-party talks to resume "as soon as possible", Obama said Tuesday after talks with President Hu Jintao in Beijing -- the third stop on his tour after the weekend Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore.
Lee and Obama have developed a "close relationship" in the six-party talks and other issues, Obama's top East Asia aide Jeffrey Bader said this month.
But Lee is expected to press his guest on the free trade deal, which has been in limbo since it was signed in June 2007.
"The president (Lee) is expected to stress the importance of the FTA in that it has been over two years since the deal was signed and it needs to be quickly enacted," a Seoul presidential official said this week.
As a candidate, Obama termed the pact "deeply flawed" and his administration has since indicated it wants changes to open South Korea wider to US beef and auto exporters.
Seoul opposes any renegotiation of what would be the biggest US trade pact since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. Obama has said he is committed to the deal but has not set a time-frame for ratification.
Koreans who hope the US leader will bring some positive news are likely to be disappointed, according to Victor Cha of the US Center For Strategic and International Studies.
Cha said in a commentary Obama had not enunciated a trade policy despite attending APEC, whose economies make up almost half the world's trade.
"South Korea meanwhile has grown impatient and has negotiated FTAs with other major economies, including the European Union and India, to the disadvantage of US businesses," he said.
- AFP/ir
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