Lee Meets Obamas Top Aides Over N. Korea

President Lee Myung-bak met with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republican lawmaker Jim Leach to jointly work out the denuclearization roadmap of North Korea in Washington Friday.

Both Albright and Leach are serving as top foreign policy aides for U.S. President-elect Barak Obama.

The details of the meeting were not disclosed, however. "The meeting took place at the request of the Obama camp and we agreed not to disclose details of their discussions," said the presidential spokesman, Lee Dong-kwan, who is accompanying the President in the U.S., Yonhap news reported Saturday.

Lee is currently visiting the U.S. to attend a meeting of 20 world leaders, known as “G-20 Summit,” hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush, to brainstorm the solutions for the global financial quagmire.

Albright served as the last secretary of state under the Clinton administration and visited North Korea in 2000. She was the first U.S. secretary of state to visit North Korea and so far remains the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to visit the communist country. Leach was in charge of Korean affairs when he served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee until 2006.

Obama is not attending the G-20 summit. Instead, he sent Albright and Leach as his representatives.

President Lee also met with Obama’s other foreign and security policy advisers, in a meeting hosted by the Brookings Institution, a think tank for the Democratic Party.

At the Brookings meeting, President Lee urged legislative bodies of the two countries to approve the free trade deal as soon as possible, according to Yonhap.