The 13th Senior Official Meeting(SOM) of the North East Asia Sub-regional Programme for Environment Cooperation(NEASPEC) was held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, from March 20 to 21. The meeting is an inter-governmental forum on regional environmental issues among the six countries: China, Japan, Mongolia, Russia and the two Koreas. The 13th SOM was the special occasion for celebrating the 15th anniversary of NEASPEC as well as exploring its new roles.  Discussions on new projects and institutional arrangements of NEASPEC were also held at the meeting.

The Korean delegation, headed by Director General for International Economic Affairs Choi Jai-chul was in support of the Mongolian government's proposal on a new project for dust and sandstorm monitoring and assessment capabilities in source areas. As a result of the Meeting, the demonstration project of the early warning system against the dust and sandstorm in source areas was approved, and the participants agreed to seek ways to raise awareness on the regional environmental problems. Republic of Korea, host of Trilateral Environment Ministers Meeting(TEMM) with China, Japan in 2008, is to consider holding the event of "North-East Asian Environmental Cooperation Week" to this end.

The 13th SOM of NEASPEC also discussed the institutional issue of NEASPEC as a key agenda and reviewed a proposal of Republic of Korea from the 12th SOM to host the NEASPEC Secretariat in its port city, Incheon. (The UN ESCAP has been providing interim NEASPEC Secretariat since the inception of the Programme in 1993.) However, the member states of NEASPEC decided to make the final decision of this matter in the next Meeting set to be held in Moscow, Russia, in 2009 as discussions on the establishment of 5 sub-regional offices of ESCAP are currently being held.