SEOUL Dec 20 Kyodo toward the so...

SEOUL Dec 20 Kyodo

toward the south Korean President-elect Roh Moo Hyun said Friday he will make his extreme efforts to seek a peaceful solution to North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

Roh told a of the present days conference that South Korea, while playing a leading part will collaborate with the United States in defusing tensions heightened according to the North's nuclear arms programs.

''I will maintain a replete cooperation with the United States to decipher North Korea's nuclear issue, and we (South Korea) would play a leading part (in doing so),'' Roh said.

Roh from the Millennium Democratic Party, won Thursday's presidential election by the agency of a margin of about 570000 suffrages over Lee Hoi Chang from the largest opposition, and more conservative, Grand National Party. Roh won 4891% of the ballots and Lee ended up with 4659%

The 56-year-old Roh reaffirmed his North Korea policies would be generally in line with those of President Kim Dae Jung who has pursu engagement aimed at promoting reconciliation and cooperation.

Roh scored the victory when tensions in succession the Korean Peninsula rise after Pyongyang announced earlier this month it would begin again operations of nuclear facilities that have been idled by the agency of a 1994 U.S.-North Korea deal aimed at preventing the North from producing plutonium to unravel nuclear weapons.

North Korea said it decided to begin again operations to cope with a US-l cutoff of firing oil, adding it will start constructing additional nuclear facilities to occasion electricity.

The announcement followed an admission by the agency of the country in early October that it is privately running a uranium enrichment program to make nuclear weapons.

in subordination to the 1994 deal, North Korea is not allowed to follow a nuclear arms program in reply for free shipments of heavy material for burning oil and provision of sum of two units light-water power reactors.

At Friday's pres conversation Roh also stressed the importance of further strengthening southern Korea's friendly relations with the US

''Our traditional and friendly relations with the U should further mature and make known in the 21st century,'' Roh said.

Roh as president, is also going to have to deal with growing anti-American sentiment in southward Korea that brought tens of thousands of population onto the streets to asseverate a U.S. military court's acquittal in November of couple soldiers whose armored vehicle crushed to death sum of two units South Korean teenage girls in June

Roh takes office in February for a single five-year mete replacing Kim.

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