YONHAP NEWS

(LEAD) Kim Jong-il meets Chinese delgates amid hopes for 6-way talks

SEOUL, Feb. 9 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il Monday met with a senior Chinese official in Pyongyang, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday.

   "Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, Monday received the visiting delegation of the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China led by its Head Wang Jiarui," the KCNA said. DPRK stands for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

   Wang flew to Pyongyang Saturday to help jumpstart the six-party nuclear talks, stalled over international sanctions on North Korea after the North's nuclear and missile tests early last year.

   Wang has met with the reclusive North Korean leader on each of four visits since 2004.

   The KCNA said that Wang conveyed to Kim "a verbal personal message" from Chinese President Hu Jintao, without elaborating on the content, and that Kim "expressed thanks for this and asked Wang Jiarui to convey his regards to Hu Jintao."

   After having "a cordial and friendly conversation" with Wang, Kim hosted a dinner for Wang and other delegates, the report said.

   Wang's trip to Pyongyang comes amid a flurry of diplomacy to help revive the multilateral nuclear talks, which have been on and off since they were launched in 2003.

   U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy, Lynn Pascoe, will fly to Pyongyang Tuesday for a four-day stay to discuss the North's nuclear ambitions, as well as providing humanitarian aid to the impoverished North and other issues. That will be the first bilateral contact since 2004, when Maurice Strong, then-Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy for North Korea, visited Pyongyang.

   Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, just concluded his trip to Seoul and Tokyo to reconfirm their pledge that they will not discuss easing sanctions and a peace treaty unless North Korea returns to the six-party talks first.

   North Korea has demanded that, prior to the resumption of the nuclear talks, sanctions be lifted and a peace treaty be signed to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

   Amid conflicting messages from North Korea, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley Friday expressed appreciation for China's effort to revive the nuclear talks.

   "The Chinese senior officials have regular discussions with North Korea," Crowley said. "We value that leadership by China."

   North Korea recently fired artillery rounds along the disputed maritime border with South Korea while concurrently proposing talks with South Korea for joint projects. They include operation of an industrial park in the North's border town of Kaesong and revival of the tours suspended for more than a year and a half due to a tragic shooting death of a South Korean tourist in a Northern seaside resort.

   In another conciliatory gesture, North Korea Saturday freed Robert Park, 28, an American activist who illegally entered the North on Christmas Day to draw international attention to the North's human rights records, citing the "sincere repentance of his wrongdoings."

   South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has said that he may be able to meet with North Korean leader Kim this year, giving rise to speculation that talks are under way for a breakthrough in inter-Korean ties due to the economic plight the North has been suffering since international sanctions.

   U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sunday said the Obama administration will continue engaging North Korea, which she described as "a nuclear-armed country," calling for the North's return to the denuclearization talks.

   "Engagement has brought us a lot in the last year," Clinton told CNN. "When we said that we were willing to work with North Korea if they were serious about returning to the Six-Party Talks and about denuclearizing in an irreversible way, they basically did not respond in the first instance."

   hdh@yna.co.kr
(END)