[USFK Forums] Kim appears to be ready for talks with Hu in Beijing [Yonhap]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Kim appears to be ready for talks with Hu in Beijing

BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il appeared to be in Beijing Tuesday, ready for talks with Chinese leaders that would focus on stalled nuclear disarmament talks, diplomatic sources and witnesses said.

In keeping with its past practice, Beijing continued to keep Kim's trip to China under wraps but Japanese television footage showed the leader touring Shenzen, a high-tech city near Hong Kong, on Sunday.

Kim disappeared from Shenzen on Monday morning but a full day later, a convoy of 40 black and white sedans similar to the one used by the leader and his party in Shenzen was seen entering China's state guesthouse Diaoyutai in Beijing, said a group of witnesses who included international journalists.

The windows of the cars in the motorcade were all black-screened to make it difficult for passers-by to identify those inside. Armed Chinese police were deployed but did not block journalists from taking pictures.

Apparently for security reasons, Kim's train stopped at a station just outside Beijing and the leader was driven into the city by cars, diplomatic sources said.

Earlier reports said that the 63-year-old North Korean leader had crossed from his country on his own train about a week ago and went straight to China's most economically developed southern region, Guangdong Province.

Guangdong is the cradle of China's capitalist economic reforms. Kim's trip there is seen by observers as North Korea's effort to search remedies for its ailing economy. The North has been living on outside aid since the mid-1990s. A famine is believed to have killed more than 2 million North Koreans.

"Kim's visit to China this time is similar to his 2001 trip to China, after which North Korea carried out some limited capitalist reforms," Koh Yoo-hwan, a North Korean affairs professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, said. "It may possibly open a new special economic zone near its border with China."
The ongoing international tension over North Korea's nuclear weapons program is expected to be a main topic in talks between Kim and Chinese President Hu Jintao, diplomatic sources in Beijing said.

Hu made a rare visit to North Korea in October and discussed stalled six-nation talks on the North's nuclear program which also involve the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Russia.

China is under international pressure to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions. China is the North's only remaining communist ally and its main food and energy provider. But China insists that its influence on the North is limited.

In September, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for political and economic benefits but follow-up talks stalled because of U.S. financial sanctions linked to the North's alleged money-laundering and other illicit activities.

North Korea has denied any wrongdoing but vows not to rejoin the six-nation talks unless the U.S. sanctions are lifted. The
U.S. maintains that its law-enforcement action has nothing to do with the talks.

"The U.S. sanctions and pressure upon the DPRK are the main obstacle to the progress of the talks," the North's official news agency, KCNA, said Tuesday, using the country's official name, the People's Republic of Korea.

"As the U.S. financial sanctions are an issue directly linked with the talks, it is unthinkable for the DPRK to negotiate the nuclear issue with the party seeking to isolate and stifle it while being exposed to sanctions," said the KCNA commentary, monitored in Seoul.

The current nuclear tension erupted in 2002 when U.S. officials accused North Korea of pushing a uranium-based arms program in violation of international accords.

North Korea has declared that it has plutonium-based nuclear weapons but has not disclosed the number.

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