Mr Manase Peter Salema, Director for Asia & the Pacific Division (TCAP) of IAEA reiterated the need to achieve strategic sustainable development of RCA through increasing the viability and visibility of RCA. Mr M P Salema who visited RCARO on 20 October 2006 viewed that the roles and responsibilities of RCARO should be further enhanced with the full recognition of and support by the RCA Member States in order to enable RCARO to lead achieving these objectives.

Mr M P Salema visited Korea as part of his mission to promote co-operation between IAEA and Korean government. During his 19-24 October visit, he will also participate in the IAEA/RCA regional training course on 'Tumor Imaging using Radioisotopes' which will be held in Seoul in conjunction
with the WFNMB (World Federation of Nuclear Medicine & Biology) 2006 Congress.

At RCARO, Mr M P Salema highly commended various programmes that RCARO has undertaken in the past years for the benefit of the Member States and the region. He particularly expressed enthusiasm on the initiation of the RCA-UNDP post-tsunami environment impact assessment project, a newly elaborated regional project by RCARO. He added that this new initiation would be a good touchstone for achieving sustainable development of RCA in addition to the traditional support by IAEA. Mr Salema also shared views with Mr Kun-Mo Choi, Dir. RCARO, on enhancing operational status of RCARO.