S. Korean minister to press N. Korea at regional forum

By Lee Chi-dong
PHUKET, Thailand, July 21 (Yonhap) -- South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan
will push hard to ensure Seoul's demand for North Korea's denuclearization is
reflected in a statement to sum up this week's regional security forum here, his
aides said Tuesday.
Toward that end, Yu will seek support from Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan
Wirayuda at a bilateral meeting Tuesday, his first official activity on the
sidelines of this week's ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), at which North Korea will be
one of the key topics.
The annual ASEAN session comes at a critical juncture in terms of international
cooperation in pressing North Korea to resume talks with the U.S., South Korea,
China, Russia, and Japan over its nuclear program. The communist nation faces a
set of United Nations sanctions for its second atomic test on May 25.
"Indonesia is a leading country in the Southeast Asian region. Minister Yu will
try to drum up support for South Korea's position, especially in drawing up the
chairman's statement," a South Korean foreign ministry official said, requesting
anonymity. The statement is to be issued at the close of the forum on Thursday.
He declined to elaborate on the language South Korea wants to include in the
document.
The two Koreas have often competed to get their positions reflected in
international statement, but the competition has grown fierce since the
conservative South Korean administration was launched early last year.
President Lee Myung-bak has taken a tougher stance on Pyongyang than his two
liberal predecessors.
In the previous session in Singapore last year, the South Korean delegation
lobbied hard to insert a reference to the shooting death of a South Korean
tourist by a North Korean soldier into the chairman's statement. The North's
delegation wanted wording calling for cross-border economic projects and measures
to ease tensions.
In the end, host Singapore decided to omit both issues from the statement.
Besides the North Korean issue, the South Korean and Indonesian top diplomats
plan to talk about the outcome of Indonesia's recent presidential polls and ways
to bolster cooperation in the G-20 financial summit, according to the official.
The ARF member countries are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar,
the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The dialogue partners are Australia, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, India, the
European Union, New Zealand, the U.S. and Russia. The ARF also involves North
Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, East Timor and Papua New Guinea.
The South Korean minister is scheduled to attend the foreign ministerial meetings
of the ASEAN+3 (South Korea, China, and Japan), the East Asia Summit, and the
regional forum of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
He will also hold a series of one-on-one talks with his counterparts from the
U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and Australia before returning to Seoul on Friday.
lcd@yna.co.kr

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