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‘Bush agreed to visit North Korea’

SEOUL: South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said Tuesday US President George W Bush had offered to join him on a trip to North Korea, but aides said there was no formal agreement.

Reports quoted Roh as saying he made the proposal late last year and Bush answered in the affirmative.

Roh made the disclosure in a meeting with his cabinet, according to a pool report of the meeting.

Aides to Roh were quick to point out the conversation was informal and casual and there was no suggestion of a formal agreement on either side to travel to the Stalinist state. The casual conversation between the two leaders took place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago, Chile, last November. Bush will visit South Korea in November to attend the next APEC summit scheduled to take place in the southern port city of Busan.

Roh told his cabinet that Bush said he was ready to take time out from Busan to travel north to visit an industrial park for South Korean firms being built in North Korea’s border city of Kaesong.

“During a standing conversation, I made a suggestion that President Bush and I go to the Kaeseong complex when he comes for APEC (in Busan). President Bush said ‘Yes, let’s go. If you go I will go’.”

A visit to North Korea by a US president is unprecedented and highly unlikely while North Korea remains deadlocked in a standoff with the outside world over its nuclear weapons ambitions, analysts said.

“President Bush and President Roh had a private conversation in a hallway outside the conference room on the second day of the APEC meeting in Chile... this must not be interpreted as an official agreement,” said presidential spokesman Kim Jong-Min. afp

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