By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: May 15, 2012
SEOUL — South Korea has received assurances from Myanmar that it will no longer buy weapons from North Korea, an aide to PresidentLee Myung-bak said Tuesday.
President Thein Sein of Myanmar acknowledged that his country had bought conventional weapons from North Korea over the past 20 years but vowed in a meeting with Mr. Lee in the Burmese capital on Monday to end that practice, said the aide to the South Korean president, Kim Tae-hyo.
The presidential office in Seoul confirmed Mr. Kim’s comments.
Mr. Thein Sein also indicated Tuesday that Myanmar had not pursued the development ofnuclear weapons and vowed to honor a U.N. Security Council resolution that bans countries from engaging in activities that could assist North Korea’s nuclear and long-range missile programs, Mr. Kim said.
“I urged President Thein Sein not to do any trade with North Korea that violates international regulations,” Mr. Lee said at a joint news conference with the Burmese opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon on Tuesday, the South Korean news media reported.
Mr. Lee recognized Myanmar’s recent efforts toward political change, including the government’s willingness to let him meet with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who, after years under house arrest, is now a member of Parliament.
After a 45-minute meeting with Mr. Lee, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said that South Korea and Myanmar had much in common, including having had to “take the hard road to democratic leadership,” The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Lee vowed during the official visit to increase loans to Myanmar, to help set up an economic policy institute there and to invite Burmese students to study in South Korea.
He was the first South Korean president to visit Myanmar since a bombing attributed to North Korean agents killed 17 South Korean delegates in Yangon in 1983. Myanmar cut off diplomatic ties with North Korea after the attack but restored them in 2007 .
In recent years, U.S. officials have expressed growing concern about the possibility of an illicit weapons trade between Myanmar and North Korea, as Pyongyang seeks new sources of income to make up for tightened international sanctions. Unconfirmed news reports in recent years alleged that Myanmar might be seeking its own nuclear weapons program with help from North Korea.
On Tuesday, Mr. Lee laid flowers at the site of the 1983 bombing, Martyr’s Mausoleum, which is dedicated to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, Gen. Aung San, the Burmese independence hero.
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