(2nd LD) Leaders of S. Korea, ASEAN agree to review forging `strategic partnership`

(ATTN: UPDATES with President Lee's remarks, minor edits)
By Byun Duk-kun
HUA HIN, Thailand, Oct. 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and
leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed
Saturday to work for the establishment of a strategic partnership.
The move was recommended in a report from a research group, adopted by the
leaders at a Korea-ASEAN summit held here in the eastern Thai resort city of Hua
Hin.
"President Lee and the 10 leaders of ASEAN exchanged their views on ways to
improve the Korea-ASEAN relations," Lee's presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said
in a press release.
A strategic partnership between South Korea and ASEAN will significantly boost
their diplomatic ties in tandem with their economic cooperation, enhanced in June
when the sides signed a free trade deal on investment, Cheong Wa Dae said.
Korea and ASEAN established a comprehensive cooperation partnership in 2004.
At the summit, Lee reconfirmed South Korea's plan to more than double its
official development aid (ODA) to ASEAN by 2015 over 2008 while increasing its
loans from the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) to the region.
"South Korea is greatly interested in narrowing the development gap between
countries in Asia. South Korea will significantly expand its ODA and EDCF and
humbly share with ASEAN countries its development experience that allowed it to
grow so rapidly over the past decades," President Lee said at the summit,
according to the press statement.
Efforts are also underway to direct half of US$200 million Seoul has promised to
offer to Asia under its East Asia Climate Partnership fund to the countries in
this region, Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said.
Lee also expressed hope to host the "conference on the viable city," which was
proposed at the summit by Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, she told
reporters.
The South Korean leader arrived here Friday following his visits to Vietnam and
Cambodia, members of ASEAN. The other members are Brunei, Indonesia, Laos,
Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and the Philippines.
The three-nation trip, along with Lee's bilateral and multilateral summits with
ASEAN, sought to improve South Korea's diplomatic relations with the countries
under its "New Asia Initiative."
Lee and ASEAN leaders first met in June when he hosted a special summit on his
country's southern resort island of Jeju.
In a bilateral summit held in Hanoi earlier this week, the South Korean president
and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Minh Triet agreed to forge a "strategic
cooperative partnership" between the countries, the third of its kind for South
Korea and fourth for Vietnam.
"The trip to Southeast Asia helped expand the ground for our new Asia diplomacy.
Strengthening of the country's ties with ASEAN is at the center of our New Asia
Initiative that is a key foreign policy of the Lee Myung-bak administration," the
spokeswoman, Kim, said.
President Lee and the 10 ASEAN leaders later held a separate summit, known as the
ASEAN Plus Three summit, which also involved the leaders of Japan and China.
The heads of 13 state or governments will be joined here Sunday by their
counterparts from India, Australia and New Zealand in a larger regional
conference, the East Asia Summit.
bdk@yna.co.kr
(END)