Third ASEM opens in Seoul

The Third Asia-Europe Meeting opens for 2 days in Seoul on Friday, with the attendance of the leaders of 26 nations of Asia and Europe.

On the first day they are expected to adopt a "Seoul Declaration" expressing their endorsement of inter-Korean rapprochement and calling for their joint or separate efforts at improving relations with North Korea. On the second day a statement will be released by the chairman in addition to the Asia-Europe Cooperation Framework 2000. Korea presides over the meeting as the host country.

On the morning of Thursday the representatives of the participating nations held a Senior Officials Meeting and a ministerial preparatory meeting where three draft documents were approved for submission to the summit talks. On the controversial point at issue regarding the weapons of mass destruction, which was to be included in the Seoul Declaration, the draft opted for vague generalities exhorting common endeavor for the peace and stability in Northeast Asia by way of avoiding contentious language. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade delivered the draft of the Seoul Declaration to North Korea Thursday.

In the afternoon President Kim Dae-Jung got together with Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and eight other leaders in a summit of 10 Asian countries where the participants favorably evaluated the increased chances of dissipating the peril of renewed war and establishing peace in the Korean Peninsula.

Earlier in September senior officials of the member nations had agreed on 12 cooperative projects of ASEM. The probability is that more projects, including the one on information technology and another on cross-national crimes, will be added to increase the number to more than 15.