Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il said he was pleased to see Russia’s development, after being warmly welcomed by Russian officials at the start of a rare trip to the Cold War era ally, North Korean state media reported yesterday.
Kim crossed into Russia on his armored train on Saturday at the invitation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, with the two leaders reportedly planning a summit aimed at discussing the restart of nuclear disarmament talks and the construction of a pipeline that would stream Russian natural gas to North and South Korea.
Kim’s train stopped in the Russian border city of Khasan on Saturday morning before moving on to its next destination, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported from Pyongyang. KCNA and the Kremlin had said earlier that Kim would visit Russia’s Far East region and Siberia.
Photo: AFP
At Khasan’s railway station, Kim was warmly greeted by senior Russian officials, including Viktor Ishayev, presidential envoy to the far east region of the -Russian -Federation, KCNA said.
The Russian officials said Kim’s trip would “mark a historic occasion” in moving cooperative bilateral ties to a “fresher and higher stage,” KCNA said. Kim replied he was “very pleased” to see the achievement made by the Russian people and thanked Russian officials and people for warmly welcoming him, it said.
After leaving Khasan, Kim’s train continued to travel west, stopping briefly at the Khabarovsk railway station before arriving in Amur Region yesterday morning, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified diplomatic sources. In Amur, Kim was to tour a large-scale hydroelectric power plant, it said.
Kim’s visit to Russia — his first since 2002 — comes amid signs that Pyongyang is increasing efforts to secure aid and restart stalled six-nation disarmament negotiations aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program in return for aid.
Last month, a senior North Korean diplomat visited New York to discuss ways to resume the nuclear talks last held in December 2008. Earlier, the nuclear envoys of North and South Korea met in Indonesia and agreed to work toward the resumption of the talks, which involve the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan.
Russia and North Korea both announced on Friday that Moscow would provide food assistance, including about 45,359 tonnes of wheat, to Pyongyang. North Korea might face another food crisis this year due to heavy rains.
“The key reasons for Kim’s Russian visit are to discuss receiving food aid and improving economic cooperation between the two” countries, said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
North Korea said last week that Medvedev sent a letter calling for greater energy cooperation among Russia and the two Koreas, saying it would enhance regional security. That came after Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow was in talks with Pyongyang and Seoul separately on putting gas pipes through the Korean Peninsula.
The pipeline construction is a chance “to include North Korea in a large international project that will give a new stimulus to the North Korean regime,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine.
“This is both gas and the transit money for gas” to South Korea, he said.
The 69-year-old Kim traveled to China in May in a trip seen by many as an attempt to secure aid, investment and support for a transfer of power to his youngest son. It was Kim’s third visit to his country’s closest ally in just over a year.
Yang said that Kim was now seeking Russia’s support for the father-to-son power transfer.
Russian state news channel Rossiya 24 reported that Medvedev would meet Kim in Ulan Ude, the capital of Buryatia, a Buddhist province near Lake Baikal.
Kim would have to travel about 3,000km on the Trans-Siberian Railway along the borders with China and Mongolia to reach Ulan Ude from Khasan.
Yonhap said the summit would take place tomorrow at an army base in Ulan Ude.
The Kremlin press service said that details of Kim’s visit were still being worked out with the North Korean side.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion