By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
President Lee Myung-bak will hold a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama at Cheong Wa Dae tomorrow to discuss North Korea's nuclear program and the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA).
Obama will arrive in Seoul this afternoon as part of his first Asian tour since his inauguration in January, which took him to Singapore, Japan and China.
Following the summit with Lee, Obama plans to visit a U.S. military base near Seoul to deliver a speech on the Korea-U.S. alliance and North Korea.
Lee and Obama are expected to call on Pyongyang to return to the six-nation dialogue on the nuclear issue. They may also seek ways to move forward with the ratification of the trade deal, signed by the two governments in June 2007, but still awaiting ratified by both country's legislatures.
The agenda could also include South Korea's move to dispatch security troops to Afghanistan to help U.S. rehabilitation efforts and the planned transfer of wartime operational control by the U.S. military to South Korea.
Lee and Obama have met three times. They met first in London in April on the sidelines of the G20 Summit and held talks in Washington in June during Lee's U.S. trip. They also met in Singapore this month during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
While meeting with Lee in June, Obama said he would seek the appropriate political timing for submission of the KORUS FTA to Congress ``once we have resolved some of the substantive issues.''
At issue is what the United States calls an imbalance in the auto trade and restricted shipments of beef.
Trade representatives of the two countries met on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Singapore to discuss ways to achieve ratification of the FTA, South Korean officials said.
jj@koreatimes.co.kr
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