President-elect Lee Myung-bak will meet with his former party rival Park Geun-hye and three other senior party lawmakers this week to discuss sending them as his special envoys to the United States, China, Russia and Japan, Lee's aides said Tuesday.
Park, former chairwoman of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP), recently accepted Lee's call to visit China as a special envoy .
Lee won a landslide victory on the GNP ticket in last month's presidential election after narrowly beating Park in the party primaries in August.
Park is said to be on the list of candidates for first prime minister under the Lee administration which assumes power on Feb. 25. Lee is expected to nominate the premier sometime next week.
Park's acceptance to visit Beijing in her capacity as Lee's special envoy came as a surprise to political pundits here as she and Lee have been engaged in fierce conflict over when the party should select party candidates for the parliamentary elections slated for April.
While Lee calls for a delay in the party nomination until after his Feb. 25 inauguration, Park wants to make it earlier.
Park fears Lee might be trying to fill the GNP ranks with lawmakers loyal to him, a move that could jeopardize her chances of winning the party's ticket to run for president in 2012.
Lee will also meet with three other envoys. They are Rep. Chung Mong-joon, his special envoy to the United States, Rep. Lee Sang-deuk, his elder brother and Vice National Assembly Speaker, as the envoy to Japan, and Rep. Lee Jae-oh as the envoy to Russia. The special envoys are to deliver his personal letters to the
leaders of the four powers which have vital interest in the Korean Peninsula.
Lee plans to dispatch the special envoys as early as next Monday to convey his wish of early summits soon after his inauguration in late February and discuss efforts for a diplomatic breakthrough on the stalled multilateral talks on persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.
The two Koreas and the four powers are members of the six-party nuclear talks.