U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will meet in Washington on January 19 for their first discussion under a new strategic partnership, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday according to Deutsche Presse Agentur (dpa). The talks, billed as Strategic Consultations for Allied Partnership, were agreed to during a meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and his South Korean counterpart, Roh Moo-hyun, in Gyeongju last November. On the agenda will be global, regional and bilateral issues, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "The strategic consultations reflect the dynamic global partnership we have developed with the Republic of Korea and consolidate the strong bilateral cooperation that we have long shared," he said. A key issue involving the two countries is the standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. Six-nation talks involving China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas have stalled over Pyongyang's refusal to return to the table. During a round of discussions in Beijing in September, North Korea agreed to abandon the nuclear programme in return for economic and security guarantees, but insists that Washington drop sanctions before it resumes negotiations on how to implement that deal. New tension arose after the meeting when the United States imposed sanctions on the Macau-based bank Banco Delta Asia, accusing it of helping North Korea distribute counterfeit currency. A month later, Washington also froze the assets of eight companies based in the communist country that it accused of weapons proliferation. --SP 23 55 Local Time 20 55 GMT
