Report: NKorean leader Kim Jong Il reiterates promise to denuclearize Korean peninsula

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Report: NKorea’s Kim reiterates disarmament pledge

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Il assured a high-level envoy visiting from Beijing that Pyongyang is committed to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, China’s state news agency reported Tuesday.

Kim reportedly made the pledge on Monday at the start of a week of diplomacy designed to get the stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks back on track. A high-level U.N. envoy also was due in Pyongyang on Tuesday.

North Korea walked away from the disarmament talks last year during a standoff over its nuclear and missile programs. The disarmament process includes the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the U.S.

Pyongyang, however, has been reaching out to Washington, Seoul and Beijing in recent months, and has taken tentative steps toward discussing how to get the process going again.

“The sincerity of relevant parties to resume the six-party talks is very important,” Kim said during a meeting with top Chinese Communist Party official Wang Jiarui, Xinhua News Agency reported from Pyongyang. Kim reiterated his country’s “persistent stance to realize the denuclearization” of the peninsula, it said.

Wang delivered to Kim a letter from Chinese President Hu Jintao, in which he said Beijing is also ready to enhance cooperation and work with North Korea to maintain peace and stability on the peninsula, it said. Hu also invited Kim to visit China, Xinhua added.

Earlier Tuesday, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that Wang conveyed to Kim a verbal message from Hu and that the North Korean leader asked him to convey his regards to Hu. KCNA said the two had a “cordial and friendly conversation” but didn’t elaborate on what was discussed.

The location of the meeting was unclear, with the caption of two KCNA-dispatched photos saying it took place in Pyongyang while a Xinhua photo caption citing the eastern city of Hamhung.

North Korea has offered similar disarmament promises in the past, but a Seoul-based analyst still called Kim’s remarks a positive development.

“I think Kim Jong Il will soon send his envoy to China to more clearly disclose his disarmament plan and set a date for his country’s return to the six-party talks,” said Yang Moo-jin of Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies.

Later Tuesday, North Korea’s top nuclear envoy, Kim Kye Gwan, arrived in Beijing with Wang, who returned home after a four-day trip to Pyongyang, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. Yonhap, citing unidentified diplomatic sources in Beijing, said the North Korean envoy’s trip is believed aimed at discussing the six-party talks.

China’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on Kim’s reported arrival.

Pyongyang on Saturday released an American missionary detained since Christmas for illegal entry, and on Monday officials from the two Koreas met in a North Korean border town to discuss restarting joint tours suspended in 2008.

U.N. political chief B. Lynn Pascoe, who travels to North Korea this week, is reportedly bearing a letter from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of South Korea. Pascoe’s trip will be the first by a high-level U.N. official since 2004, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry.

Pascoe will urge North Korea to rejoin the nuclear talks, and discuss the country’s relationship with the world body, a U.N. official in New York said on condition of anonymity, citing policy.

North Korea has made clear it wants sanctions lifted and a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-1953 Korean War before returning to the disarmament talks. Washington has responded that Pyongyang must come back to the talks first before any talk about political and economic concessions.