Representatives of presidential hopefuls Roh Moo-hyun of the Millennium Democratic Party and Chung Mong-joon of the National Alliance Party 21, who have agreed to seek an alliance to field a single candidate, agreed to hold a televised debate between November 20 to 23 and to launch an opinion poll to select a single candidate before November 27.

However, neither side released details of the methodology of the survey, saying it could affect the outcome, but added the candidate who loses out will head the election committee for the other. They are seeking the cooperation of KBS, MBC and SBS to hold three to four debates.

By agreeing to decide how they're going to select which one of the two men will run for president, Roh and Chung were able to remove a key hurdle that had stalled talks on fielding a single candidate. The agreement comes just a month before the crucial vote on December 19, as they hope to overturn the tide as Lee Hoi-chang of the Grand National Party continues to lead in opinion polls. Roh and Chung said they stood united on changing politics as usual, and shared similar views on inter-Korean relations, economic and agricultural reforms.

The GNP called the move blatantly populist and leader Seo Chung-won said he had received information that should the single candidate win the presidential election, the ousted candidate would be prime minister and ministerial posts would be divided between the two parties. He said the move was a fraudulent attempt to continue the corrupt MDP government. Spokesman Nam Kyung-pil said the TV debates and opinion poll were clear violations of the election law.

A Chosun Ilbo and Korea Gallop telephone survey immediately after the announcement, Saturday and found GNP candidate Lee would beat Chung 39.8 percent to 38.6 percent, and Roh 42.3 percent to 38.3 percent. Some 43.6 percent want Roh as the singled candidate, while 33.7 percent want Chung. The survey was conducted on 2,010 adults nationwide and had a maximum error of 2.2 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.

(Choi Joon-seok, jschoi@chosun.com )