Unclear Outlook for Single Candidacy amid Wide Gap between Roh and Chung

The Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) and National Alliance 21 (NA21), which have exchanged harsh words over the leak of information on the survey for the single candidacy between Roh Moo-hyun and Chung mong-joon, presidential candidates of the two parties, set out to negotiate again on Nov. 19 to fine-tune their opinions on the survey method.

As a result, the single candidacy talks, which were almost deadlocked, were back on track. However, the outlook is not so bright as the gap between the two camps over the survey method is expected to widen. In addition, the MDP is throwing doubts on National Alliance 21’s move Nov. 18 to create a floor negotiation group through four-way alliance.

Min Chang-gi from NA21 and Shin Gye-ryun from the MDP met with each other in a hurry on the evening of the same day, and discussed the time schedule and methods of renegotiation until late night.

Meanwhile, after an unofficial contact, Lee Cheol of NA21 and Lee Hae-chan of the MDP held a press meeting, in which they made an announcement that they decided to have talks for renegotiation.

Lee cheol showed his expectation, saying, "The talks themselves are a kind of start of renegotiation. Because there is not much time, and many people are trying hard for the renegotiation, the two camps will reach agreement over the procedure of renegotiation."

Earlier, NA21 demanded that negotiations should be held again over the survey method for the single candidacy and those responsible for the leak of the joint statement between the two camps to the press and Lee Hae-chan, chief MDP negotiator, should be excluded from the MDP negotiation team. Roh’s camp rejected the demand, saying that they could participate in renegotiations over change of the survey time schedule and the survey pollsters but they could not accept the request for the exclusion of Lee Hae-chan form the negotiation team and a completely different renegotiation for the way of the single candidacy.

Sung-Won Park Jeong-Hun Kim swpark@donga.com jnghn@donga.com