NORTH KOREA yesterday released two jailed American journalists after a visit from former US president Bill Clinton in the highest-level US contact with North Korea since Mr Clinton was president almost a decade ago.
North Korea’s KCNA news agency said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had issued a special pardon to the two journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who worked for former vice-president Al Gore’s California-based Current TV media venture. They were arrested along the North Korean-Chinese border in March.
Mr Clinton was the highest-level American to visit the reclusive communist state since his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, went there in 2000.
On arrival in the capital Pyongyang for his surprise trip to secure the release of the two women Mr Clinton was greeted with flowers and handshakes.
Against a backdrop of concerns about the North’s nuclear weapons programme, Mr Clinton was met by a number of North Korean officials, including Kim Kye-Gwan, the North’s chief envoy at the six-party nuclear talks.
The former president later had dinner with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Washington described the visit as private and purely personal.
North Korea had accused the two journalists of sneaking into the country illegally and engaging in “hostile acts”. The country’s top court sentenced them in June to 12 years of hard labour.
Analysts had been confident that the decision to send a high-profile figure such as Mr Clinton would probably help ease the release of the journalists, although they said it was unlikely to have any major impact on the broader issues relating to the North’s nuclear plans.
Relations between Washington and Pyongyang have been strained since the arrest of the journalists, and because of heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear programme. In recent months, North Korea has abandoned a disarmament pact, launched a long-range rocket, conducted a nuclear test and test-fired a barrage of ballistic missiles in defiance of the UN Security Council.
Washington has been calling for international support for strict enforcement of a UN sanctions resolution, adopted to punish the North for its nuclear test.
Pyongyang is hoping for one-on-one negotiations with Washington, and insists it will not return to six-nation nuclear negotiations involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States, despite the urgings of its only significant ally, Beijing.
– (Additional reporting Reuters)