NORTH KOREAN leader Kim Jong-il came out in person yesterday to greet Wen Jiabao, prime minister of neighbouring China, at the airport ahead of “solidarity” meetings to discuss a number of issues joining the two ideological allies that may yield a breakthrough at last in deadlocked nuclear talks.
Mr Wen was accompanied on his three-day visit by foreign minister Yang Jiechi and China’s envoy to the stalled talks, Wu Dawei.
The reclusive North Korean leader has hinted he may be willing to come back to the nuclear negotiation table and may make an “important announcement” during Mr Wen’s visit.
The two men were due to hold talks today and diplomatic sources in Beijing said Mr Kim was expected to state his willingness to give up nuclear weapons.
The positive tone follows months of more upbeat sentiment about relations between the two Koreas, following the release of two detained US reporters and five South Koreans, as well as an easing of border curbs for visitors from the south.
North Korea and China were allies in the Korean War (1950-53) that resulted in the division of the Korean peninsula and since which no formal peace deal has been signed. China considers North Korea its ideological “little brother”, but at times an exasperating one.
Mr Wen arrives in Pyongyang just days after a massive display of China’s military and economic power in central Beijing to mark the country’s 60th anniversary, but the visit finds North Korea at a low ebb, as the already underperforming economy suffers from international sanctions following widely condemned nuclear tests.
The hopes are that the unusual three-day visit is more than just a courtesy call to a long-time communist ally, but a signal of a possible resumption of the talks grouping the two Koreas, the US, Russia, Japan and China.
Pyongyang quit the talks in protest at the United Nations’s censure of its long-range rocket launch on April 5th.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries and it has been named the “Year of China-DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) Friendship”.
Since then, Pyongyang has been seeking direct talks with Washington, which angers China, host of six-party talks. Washington is considering bilateral talks as a way of getting North Korea back around a table, even though Pyongyang repeatedly says the six-party talks are dead.
The South Koreans say North Korea insists on direct talks with the US because it wants recognition as a nuclear state, and warns that the North’s atomic bombs are intended to target South Korea.
South Korean president Lee Myung-bak has cautioned against over-hasty optimism, saying that the North has shown no willingness to disarm.
In what seemed almost like a fit of pique, Pyongyang staged a second atomic weapons test in May, bringing stronger United Nations sanctions backed even by China, its closest ally.
But since August, Pyongyang has made conciliatory gestures to Washington as it believes it can talk to the Obama administration.