ROK's Lee urges support for G20 hosting

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By Fu Jing in New York and Zhang Haizhou in Beijing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-24 07:24

NEW YORK: The president of the Republic of Korea (ROK) expressed hope yesterday that China will continue to back the ROK's push to host the G20 leaders summit next spring.

Lee Myung-bak made the comment during a meeting hosted by President Hu Jintao, in which Hu said China was willing to strengthen cooperation with South Korea at the bilateral, regional and international levels.

Chinese experts said China should support the ROK's efforts, adding that Seoul was actually calling for more attention from Beijing on bilateral ties.

When opening the meeting, Lee expressed his "heartfelt thanks" for Beijing's support of Seoul's bid to host the G20 summit.

"China has given a lot of support to the ROK's plan to host the next G20 summit," Lee said, adding that he "hopes China's support will last".

After summits in Washington and London, the G20 is meeting in Pittsburgh this week.

If the summit is held in ROK it would be the first time the meeting has been hosted in Asia.

Su Hao, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, said Beijing "should support" its Asian neighbor's willingness to hold the summit.

"It's a smart arrangement," Su said.

Su said it would be better than having Japan and China competing to host the meeting.

He added that Seoul is attracting more Chinese attention on international affairs by calling for Beijing's support.

"Seoul feels that Beijing has not attached enough importance on it," he said.

During yesterday's meeting, Lee also said Hu's speech on climate change summit had given a very "active and positive" message that China is "committed to tackle global warming".

"The stance has won wide approval from the international community," Lee said.

Hu meets Medvedev

Yesterday, Hu also met his Russia counterpart, Dimitry Medvedev.

While opening the two meetings hosted by China, Hu touched on his skipping of a scheduled meeting with the Korean and Russian presidents in July in Italy when they attended the G8 summit. He did so because of the Xinjiang riot.

"Stronger bilateral ties would not be weakened between our two countries just because of skipping one meeting," Medvedev responded, adding that bilateral relations will be further boosted thanks to regular meetings at various levels between the two nations.

Hu said the regular meetings would push forward the strategic cooperation partnership between the two countries.

"I hope we can further strengthen our bilateral diplomatic relationship through this regular meeting mechanism," said Hu.