Obama to visit Seoul next month for summit

SEOUL, Oct. 8 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President Barack Obama will visit South Korea next
month for talks with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak that will focus on ways
to denuclearize North Korea and strengthen the South Korea-U.S. alliance, Seoul's
presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said Thursday.
"President Lee will hold a bilateral summit with President Obama during the U.S.
president's visit here to discuss ways to deepen and expand the cooperative
relationship between the two countries," Cheong Wa Dae said in a press release.
The talks will also focus on global issues, such as the economic crisis, climate
change and the war on terrorism, it added.
Obama will arrive here Nov. 18 following his trip to Singapore for the annual
summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, which Lee will also attend. He
will depart the next day.
Obama's Asia trip also includes Japan and China.
Next month's summit will be the third between Lee and Obama, They first met in
April on the sidelines of the G-20 economic summit in London. Lee visited
Washington in June for a summit, at which the two leaders issued a joint vision
for the Korea-U.S. alliance that called for the immediate and unconditional
denuclearization of the communist North.
The November meeting is expected to generate more details for the
denuclearization of the North, as it follows the South Korean president's recent
proposal of a "grand bargain." The proposal calls for the dismantlement of North
Korea's key nuclear capabilities in a single step, as opposed to phases, in
exchange for a full range of political and economic incentives.
The North had nearly disabled its nuclear reactor and other facilities under an
aid-for-denuclearization accord signed in 2007, but started to restore them when
six-nation disarmament talks became deadlocked over how to verify its atomic
stockpile.
The disarmament talks involve the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia.
bdk@yna.co.kr
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