FOREIGN MINISTER MEETS S.KOREAN COUNTERPART

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia /MONTSAME/ The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea Mr Kim Sung-hwan has congratulated Mongolia on becoming a participating state of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and emphasized that Mongolia is the very first Asian state to become such a member in the OSCE. He said it at a meeting with his Mongolian counterpart L.Bold in Seoul Tuesday. He expressed a confidence that Mongolia will contribute to ensuring of the peace, including the security of Asia. In response, Mr Bold said this membership is the many-year hard efforts of Mongolia and thanked S.Korea's government for the congratulations. He congratulated the Republic of Korea on being elected the Non-Permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. L.Bold said Mongolia wants to boost a sustainable and mutually beneficial comprehensive partnership with the Republic of Korea, to introduce its hi tech into the biggest projects on great construction, and to cooperate in attracting investments from the largest companies. He pointed out that the sides are actively collaborating in implementing the Asian Partnership Initiative for Democracy, co-initiated by the Presidents of the two countries, and in various measures in frames of the Community of Democracies (CoD), and invited his counterpart to the 7th Ministerial Conference of the CoD which will run in April of 2013 in Mongolia. Mongolia has friendly relations with all countries of Northeast Asia, and it always tries to contribute to solving controversial issues in the region in a peaceful way, he noted. Mongolia has hosted the intergovernmental talks between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Japan in frames of this policy, he said. Mr Kim highly appreciated Mongolia's efforts and said the Republic of Korea wants to hold negotiations with the DPRK on several matters sucn as giving a hep to N.Korea, organizing meetings between families, separated during the war, the peacekeeping operations, and then asked Mr L.Bold to convey these words to the DPRK's side. L.Bold said all will be done to resume the Six-Party Talks and to host meetings of the Talks' working groups. The S.Korean Minister underlined a requirement to launch negotiations between the air transportation bodies between the countries in order to tackle high prices of direct flights. B.Khuder