Seoul and Moscow to issue joint statement on nuclear weanpons

South Korea and Russia plan to issue a joint statement focused on their efforts to denuclearize North Korea and beef up economic cooperation with it after their leaders' summit next week in Seoul, government sources said Sunday. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to make a two-day visit to South Korea from Nov. 12 for his planned summit talks with President Park Geun-hye, South Korean news agency (Yonhap) reported. After the meeting, the leaders plan to issue a joint statement that will be focused on their shared stance on working toward denuclearizing North Korea, as well as their plan to jointly facilitate economic cooperation with the communist nation, the sources said. "Working-level discussion is now under way between the countries in order to put their cooperation plans in the joint statement," one government official said. In the two nations' previous joint statement in 2010 between former presidents Lee Myung-bak and Dmitry Medvedev, they stressed the importance of "diplomatically resolving the nuclear issue in the region." In the forthcoming statement, the countries are said to lay out their goal of denuclearizing North Korea in stronger wording, given the North's recent nuclear activities in defiance of the international community. North Korea conducted its third nuclear weapons test in February following its satellite launch in December, which are believed to be a cover for its test of nuke-loaded intercontinental ballistic missile technology. Also to be included in the joint statement is the two nations' plan to expand trans-Korean economic cooperation with Russia, such as the North Korea-Russia project of linking railways from the Russian eastern border town of Khasan to the North Korean port city of Rajin. Seoul aims to join the Pyongyang-Moscow rail project, as well as their plan to revamp the North's Rajin port, to beef up cooperation among the three countries in the logistics sector. Closer cooperation in the plan to connect a gas pipeline from Russia across the Korean Peninsula and the long-discussed project to link the Trans-Siberian Railway with the Trans-Korean Railway are also subjects to be covered in the joint statement, the sources said. "All-out cooperation among the three countries is unlikely for now, so even partial collaboration in the Rajin-Khasan project would be very meaningful," another government official said. "If it goes as planned, it will be very helpful in terms of the three countries' collaboration, as well as the Seoul government's initiative in the Eurasian region.