No Joint Declaration for Roh, Bush

It was confirmed on September 10 that South Korea and the U.S. will not adopt joint documents such as joint statements, joint declarations, and joint press statements during the summit talks in Washington scheduled for September 14.

Song Min-soon, the president’s chief secretary for national security and foreign affairs, has allegedly made the agreement after his visit to the U.S. to discuss main agendas and procedures for the summit with his U.S. counterparts, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and National Security Advisor Steven Hadley from September 5-7.

Government officials from the both sides allegedly analyzed that President Roh and his counterpart George W. Bush have such irreconcilable views over North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocation, the main agenda of the scheduled summit talks, which they failed to agree on adopting a joint document.

“The discussion of the summit meeting has revealed the different perspectives on the North Korean issues among both parties. “The two heads of state are more likely to touch upon only the theoretical background of the matter, namely to, ‘do our utmost to iron out the nuclear issues though six-party talks,’” said a diplomatic source on September 10.

Another diplomatic source stated, “Apparently, they will only hold a joint press conference after the summit talks.”

The Korea-U.S. summit meeting will be the third summit taking place in Washington for President Roh to hold during his tenure since the first one in May 2003 and the second one in June 2005, of which the first Seoul-Washington summit succeeded in adopting a joint statement while the second one failed to issue any joint document.

In the meanwhile, of all three Seoul-Washington summit conferences through APEC summit talks (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), the two states successfully issued a joint press statement (Bangkok, Thailand in October, 2003) and a joint declaration (Gyeongju, South Korea in November, 2005), but ended up without adopting a joint document for the one in Santiago, Chile in November 2004.

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