Tokyo: South Korea's next leader Lee Myung-Bak agreed today with Japan's premier to work together to push forward a denuclearisation deal with North Korea, Japanese officials said.
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda spoke by phone for 15 minutes with President-elect Lee, a conservative who won a sweeping election victory Wednesday to end a decade of liberal rule in Seoul.
The two "agreed to further strengthen cooperation between Japan and South Korea, as well as tripartite cooperation including the US, in order to completely implement the joint statement agreed in the six-way talks," a Japanese foreign ministry statement said.
Japan and South Korea are both part of the six-way talks that reached the breakthrough joint statement in February, under which North Korea agreed to disable its nuclear programmes in return for badly needed aid.
Japan has been the most hesitant member of the six-nation talks, demanding progress in a row over North Korea's past abductions of Japanese civilians to train its spies.
South Korea's outgoing president Roh Moo-Hyun, an advocate of reconciliation with the North, often accused Japan of obstructing progress in the six-way talks and of failing to atone for its past colonial rule of Korea.
Fukuda invited Lee to visit Japan, to which the president-elect replied that "he wants to see Fukuda as soon as possible," the Japanese statement said.
Lee, who has said he will not shy away from criticism of North Korea, also spoke yesterday by telephone with US President George W Bush.
