South Korea's Lee to get warm welcome from Bush

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will get a warm welcome on Friday when he sees President George W. Bush, who embraces the new, conservative president's tough stand toward North Korea.

Lee, a former construction boss and mayor of Seoul who was sworn in on February 25, is the first South Korean president to be invited to Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.

There are many issues on the table, including a dispute over U.S. beef exports and the fate of a bilateral free trade pact.

South Korea's Farm Ministry said on the eve of Lee's meeting with Bush that Seoul had agreed to open its markets wider to U.S. beef, a move that clears a major hurdle stalling a landmark trade deal with Washington.

U.S. beef exports to South Korea have yet to fully resume since the United States found its first case of mad cow disease in 2003.

The key topic of discussion between the two leaders is the multilateral effort to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

U.S. officials have made clear Bush is more at ease with Lee's harder line toward the poor, communist nation than he was with the relatively accommodating policies pursued by his two immediate predecessors.

Lee has said he will tie economic cooperation with the North to progress on denuclearization. Since his inauguration, the North has responded with a torrent of invective, including threats to reduce the South to ashes.