BEIJING (Agence France-Presse) | North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il told President Hu Jintao during his secretive trip to China that he is ready to return to stalled nuclear disarmament negotiations, a media report said Thursday.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, without giving sources, said Mr. Kim made the pledge during more than four hours of talks Wednesday with the Chinese president, who had asked Pyongyang to come back to the table.
North Korea’s “Dear Leader” arrived Monday for his first trip abroad in more than four years - a visit shrouded in secrecy, with journalists waiting hours only to catch a fleeting glimpse of a motorcade.
His apparent departure was equally stealthy. Yonhap said a special North Korean train had left Beijing Thursday and a convoy of cars had arrived at the station beforehand - without any real evidence Mr. Kim was aboard.
“Kim’s motorcade moved in the direction of Beijing Station, though it is difficult to confirm his travel route and destination,” Yonhap quoted a diplomatic source in Beijing as saying.
Analysts said Mr. Kim’s visit to China - Pyongyang’s only major ally and its main source for finance, food and fuel - was aimed at securing badly needed assistance for his sanctions-hit economy.
In return, analysts say, Mr. Kim will announce that he will rejoin talks on ending the North’s nuclear weapons drive, although Seoul insists there will be no talks until the sinking in March of a South Korean warship has been resolved.
Pyongyang is under tough U.N. sanctions over its refusal to halt its nuclear program, and its ravaged economy suffered a blow in November when a currency reform backfired, wiping out people’s savings and sending prices soaring.
China is seen as the only country capable of wielding any influence over Mr. Kim’s hard-line communist regime and persuading it back to the six-party disarmament talks.
Mr. Kim and Mr. Hu met Wednesday evening at the Great Hall of the People, and the North Korean had been expected to meet Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice President Xi Jinping on Thursday, Yonhap said.
Mr. Kim was expected to discuss economic cooperation with Mr. Wen, who proposed the development of a China-North Korea “economic belt” when he visited Pyongyang in October, Yonhap said.
The North has said it will not return to the nuclear forum grouping the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States until U.N. sanctions are lifted and Washington agrees to talks on a formal peace treaty.
But any resumption of the talks that Pyongyang walked out of a year ago has been complicated by the sinking of the South Korean ship Cheonan in March, killing 46 sailors after an explosion that Seoul has hinted could have been the work of the North.
South Korean presidential spokesman Park Sun-kyoo said it was Seoul’s “firm position that there should be no six-party talks before the Cheonan incident is resolved.”
Pyongyang has denied all responsibility.
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