Palestine plans office in Korea

By Yi Whan-woo

South Korea will begin consultations with Palestine on the establishment of a liaison office here, according to Palestine’s top diplomat, Friday.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Maliki said he and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se agreed to begin such consultations during their meeting Friday in Seoul. Maliki arrived in South Korea on Thursday for a five-day visit.

“We hope that Palestine’s representative office will be set up in South Korea at the earliest date because we believe the move will help promote relations between the two sides,” Maliki said in a press meeting. “To this end, the foreign ministers agreed to start consultations.”

If established, Palestine’s representative office will serve as a dialogue channel between its officials and the Seoul government, which does not recognize Palestine’s statehood.

Maliki said he hopes that South Korea recognizes Palestine as a sovereign state someday. He added that it is up to the Seoul government if it changes its position regarding Palestine or not.

On Friday, Yun and Maliki also discussed the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the situation on the Korean Peninsula, as well as ways to promote South Korea-Palestine relations, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Maliki is scheduled to visit Panmunjom, the truce village on the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas, on Saturday.

“I expect that Palestine’s ties with North Korea could help ease tension on the Korean Peninsula and further promote peace in the region,” he said.

North Korea repeatedly has threatened South Korea to carry out nuclear tests. Maliki says that Palestine supports denuclearization of all countries around the world.

In particular, he denied speculation that Hamas, an Islamic militant group from Palestine, has been receiving arms from Pyongyang.

South Korea has been running its representative office year-round in Palestine since September last year. The government previously ran its Palestine office when necessary, after it was set up in 2005 in Ramallah, a city in the central West Bank.

Back then, a councilor at the South Korean Embassy in Israel had jointly served as the head of the Ramallah office, according to the government.

Maliki visited Seoul in 2008 for an academic conference and in 2010 for a diplomatic mission. His trip this year is in response to Yun’s visit to Palestine last December.

Yun also visited Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia at that time as part of the Seoul government’s efforts to boost ties with the Middle East.

Maliki will depart Seoul for Japan, Monday.