In this paper we prove that the Kostrikin radical of an extended affine Lie algebra of reduced type coincides with the center of its core, and use this characterization to get a type-free description of the core of such algebras. As a consequence we get that the core of an extended affine Lie algebra of reduced type is invariant under the automorphisms of the algebra.

We introduce the notion of Lie algebras with plus-minus pairs as well as regular plus-minus pairs. These notions deal with certain factorizations in universal enveloping algebras. We show that many important Lie algebras have such pairs and we classify, and give a full treatment of, the three dimensional Lie algebras with plus-minus pairs.