By NNN-Kyodo,
Seoul : US President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak reasserted their call for North Korea on Thursday to scrap its nuclear programs, with Obama unveiling a plan to send his top North Korea policy envoy to the North in December.
Lee said at a joint news conference with Obama after their talks in Seoul the two reconfirmed a solid bilateral security posture, including the US policy of keeping South Korea under its nuclear umbrella.
He also said he and Obama agreed to offer North Korea a “grand bargain” package of political and economic incentives for the one-step, irreversible dismantling of Pyongyang’s nuclear programs.
Obama said he will send Stephen Bosworth, US special representative for North Korea policy, to the North on December 8 as part of efforts to bring the North back to the six-party denuclearization talks.
“The thing I want to emphasize is that President Lee and I both agree we want to break the pattern that existed in the past in which North Korea behaves in a provocative fashion, and then is willing to return to talk… and then that leads to seeking further concessions,” Obama said.
North Korea agreed in September 2005 to scrap its nuclear programs in an aid-for-denuclearization deal struck at the six-way talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
But it withdrew from the multilateral talks in April to protest a UN Security Council condemnation of its rocket launch, which was widely regarded as a long-range missile test.
North Korea added to the tension by detonating a nuclear device in May.
The two leaders also exchanged views on how to promote each country’s planned congressional ratification of a bilateral free trade agreement.
“We are committed to working together to move forward” on the FTA, which was signed by the two countries in 2007, but which has been languishing in Congress, Obama said.
Obama is visiting South Korea on the final leg of a four-country swing around Asia that has already taken him to Japan, Singapore and China.
He is to leave for the United States later Thursday.