SEOUL, Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul met with the ambassadors to Australia and five other countries for discussions on defense cooperation ahead of an upcoming ambassadors’ conference set for later this week, his office said Wednesday.

Cho separately met with the ambassadors — Lee Jong-sup to Australia, Lim Hoon-min to Poland, Yoo Jeh-seung to the United Arab Emirates, and Lee Sang-deok to Indonesia — between last Friday and Tuesday, the foreign ministry said.

Cho also met with Ambassadors Choi Byung-hyuk to Saudi Arabia and Lee Joon-ho to Qatar on Wednesday.

The ministry said Cho was briefed by each ambassador on various ongoing defense projects and partnerships with the six countries and discussed ways to deepen the cooperation in these areas.

The ministry’s disclosure of Cho’s meetings with the ambassadors is considered unusual since it normally does not make public every meeting the foreign minister has with an ambassador, nor does it provide accounts of such meetings in detail.

In a separate relea
se, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, the arms procurement agency, said its chief, Seok Jong-gun, had individual meetings with Lee and the other ambassadors as well.

The meetings came amid speculation that the ambassadors’ conference, slated for Thursday, was organized to give Lee a pretext to come back home as criticism grew over his appointment and departure after revelations that he was being investigated for alleged interference in a military probe into a Marine’s death.

Lee returned home Thursday, 11 days after he assumed the job in Canberra.

The foreign ministry said he came to attend the defense meeting involving the chiefs of the missions in the six countries. But questions arose as there has been no precedent for such a meeting.

Some have speculated that the presidential office ordered Lee to return in haste as public sentiment is worsening in the run-up to the parliamentary elections set for April 10.

Source: Yonhap News Agency