A senior Chinese official traveled to North Korea yesterday in what is seen as a mission to jump-start stalled international talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs.
Wang Jiarui (王家瑞), head of the liaison office of China’s ruling Communist Party, was to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and deliver a message from Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported yesterday, citing unidentified South Korean presidential officials.
The four-day trip is part of a regular exchange of visits by the longtime allies, the report said.
Calls to the presidential office seeking comment went unanswered yesterday.
Other South Korean media carried similar reports, though they differed on the timing of his trip.
Wang met Kim during a trip to Pyongyang in January last year. Kim said then that North Korea was “dedicated to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” and wanted to move international talks forward, Beijing’s Xinhua news agency said.
China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner, a key aid donor and a longtime ally dating back to the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Its influence is seen as crucial in getting the North to return to the six-nation disarmament talks, which have remained stalled since late 2008.
In Beijing, staffer Yang Lei from the Communist Party’s international department refused to comment on Friday on reports of Wang’s, saying only “the whole thing has not been confirmed yet.”
UN ENVOY
Also yesterday, a special envoy for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Seoul and said he had an “excellent discussion” with South Korean officials ahead of a visit to North Korea.
During his trip to Pyongyang from Tuesday to Friday, UN political chief B. Lynn Pascoe will urge North Korea to rejoin the nuclear talks and discuss its relations with the world body, a UN official in New York said on condition of anonymity, citing policy.
“We expect to talk about the entire range of issues while we are up there [in North Korea],” Pascoe told reporters in Seoul, without elaborating.
He was to meet South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan later yesterday.
North Korea, which tested an atomic bomb last year and is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half dozen more, walked away from the disarmament talks last year.
The other participants, China, the US, Japan, South Korea and Russia, have been trying to get the talks back on track. North Korea, however, has pushed Washington for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War and a lifting of sanctions first.
This week, Assistant US Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said no discussion about political or economic sanctions can take place before the disarmament talks are back on.
TRIP TO BEIJING?
There also has been speculation in recent weeks that North Korean leader Kim may travel to China soon. Beijing extended an invitation to Kim last year to visit at his convenience. Kim has visited China and Russia, the North’s two major remaining allies, by train. He last traveled to China in 2006.
He had planned to travel to Beijing in late January but canceled his plans, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.
Sanctions-hit North Korea wants Washington to agree to formal peace talks as a condition for returning to the stalled.
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