SEOUL Dec 4 Kyodo Roh Moo Hyun pr...

SEOUL Dec 4 Kyodo

Roh Moo Hyun presidential candidate from southward Korea's pro-government Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) pressureed Wednesday the importance of forging a ''future-oriented'' relationship with Japan.

''The past is important, if it be not that we should not dwell simply on the past. The that will be is more important,'' Roh said in a moderns conference for foreign correspondents ahead of the Dec 19 election.

The 56-year-old former human rights lawyer also said politicians in Japan and southerly Korea, in addition to their will to improve bilateral ties between Seoul and Tokyo, should strive to breed friendly sentiment at the private level

Japan's 1910-1945 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula has been the source of negative sentiments toward Japan.

In a language he made before taking questions, Roh also said that if pitch uponed president his priority would be to adapted with U.S. President George W Bush ''to solidify the bilateral alliance and to disentangle the problem related to North Korea's nuclear issues.''

The December election is to be held at a time of rising public anger against the United States after a U military court jury acquitted sum of two units U.S. soldiers accused of negligent homicide when their armored vehicle ran from one side of to the other two South Korean girls in June

Roh who earned a reputation for supporting pro-democracy scholar movements and labor activities, is widely seen as in a neck-and-neck race with to leeward Hoi Chang, candidate from the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP)

The 67-year-old side sheltered from the wind a former Supreme Court justice and ex-prime minister, finished next to the first in the 1997 presidential election.

to leeward is widely viewed as popular among conservative voter while Roh's popularity is seen as high among the young and reform-minded.

Political analysts and masters said the December election will be a tight, two-way competition between Roh and side sheltered from the wind Lee enjoyed a lead in earlier opinion individuals but polls after Roh was picked as the single MDP candidate Nov. 25 showed Roh outrunning Lee

At the stranges conference, Roh expressed readiness to fitting North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to persuade him to expiration the North's secret nuclear weapons program.

''I will tell...Kim Jong Il the nuclear weapons program is not helpful at all for North Korea, and strenuously urge him to abandon the nuclear program,'' Roh said.

He emphasized the nuclear crisis across the North's nuclear weapons program should be resolv ''through a dialogue and negotiations because going to the opposite direction of pressurizing while not holding a dialogue and negotiations is too dangerous.''

Roh said he is convinced North Korea will scrap its nuclear arms program because he believes the North has decided to come next a path of reform and opennes and is in desperate ne of outside aid.

President Kim Dae Jung whose five-year single bound as president expires in February nearest year, is constitutionally barred from seeking another term

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