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| President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook wave before leaving from Seoul Airport in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jan. 15. Yonhap |
President Moon Jae-in left for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saturday, for talks with leaders there as South Korea seeks to explore business opportunities with the Middle East nation in the fields of hydrogen, space and other sectors.
On Sunday, Moon will attend a bilateral business roundtable on cooperation in the hydrogen industry, during which he plans to ask the UAE to help Korean firms make inroads into the industry there.
Also scheduled for Sunday is a visit to a “Day of Korea” ceremony at the Expo 2020 Dubai and a meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
During the talks, Moon and the UAE prime minister will discuss ways to expand cooperation in infrastructure, efforts to tackle climate change, and space. The two leaders will also discuss Korea’s bid to host the 2030 Expo.
In Dubai, Moon will step up South Korea’s campaign to host the Expo at the nation’s southeastern port city of Busan.
The following day, Moon plans to deliver a keynote address on carbon neutrality at the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week and hold take part in a summit with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan on ways to deepen bilateral cooperation over climate change, national security and defense, and public health.
In October last year, South Korea and the UAE announced that they would launch official talks toward a bilateral free trade agreement. The UAE is Korea’s top export market in the Middle East and its biggest partner in human resource exchanges in the region.
Korea has previously said it is pushing to sell its mid-range surface-to-air missiles known as M-SAM to the UAE.
The UAE is the first leg of Moon’s three-nation trip to the Middle East that will also take him to Saudi Arabia as well as Egypt.
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| President Moon Jae-in presides over a meeting of his senior secretaries at the presidential office in Seoul, Jan. 10. Yonhap |
Moon will visit Riyadh, Tuesday, and hold talks with Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Moon and the crown prince are expected to discuss how to expand bilateral cooperation in public health, artificial intelligence, hydrogen as a power source and education, while bolstering cooperation in energy, infrastructure and construction.
After holding talks with the crown prince, Moon will attend a business forum and meet Yasir al-Rumayyan, chairman of Aramco, the kingdom’s state oil giant. The chairman also heads Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the PIF.
On Wednesday, Moon plans to attend a meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary-General Nayef bin Falah Al-Hajraf, during which they plan to announce the resumption of negotiations for a free trade agreement.
Korea and the GCC had agreed to push for a free trade deal in 2007 and had three rounds of talks until 2008, but the negotiations have since been stalled after the council announced the suspension in 2010.
Trade volume between the two came to $46.6 billion in 2020. The GCC, which has six member nations ― the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, supplies 68 percent of South Korea’s crude oil imports.
On the last leg of the trip, Moon will leave for Cairo on Wednesday evening.
He will hold summit talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Thursday, to further develop a comprehensive cooperative partnership between the two countries.
Moon and the Egyptian president are expected to agree on a joint feasibility study to forge a bilateral free trade deal, which would be Korea’s first free trade agreement on the African continent if sealed.
In Cairo, Moon will also attend a business forum where companies from the two nations plan to discuss how to strengthen cooperation in electric cars, information technology and transportation.
Moon will leave Cairo Friday afternoon and return home Jan. 22. (Yonhap)
Moon heads to UAE on Middle East economic diplomacy swing
Source: Buhay Kapa PH
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