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DPRK leader invites Clinton for mediating role
( 2002-04-29 09:43 ) (7 )

Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-il, has invited former US President Bill Clinton to visit Pyongyang to play a mediating role and to cool rhetoric from Washington, a DPRK official said on Monday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to specify whether Kim had issued the invitation to Clinton before or after US President Bush's speech in January in which he branded DPRK as part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran.

"The plan of the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is that Mr. Clinton should end the rhetoric," the official said.

Under Clinton's administration, relations between the two countries began to thaw, with then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright paying a visit to Pyongyang with a view to a possible visit by Clinton.

However, the Clinton visit did not take place amid US assessments that such a high-level trip would be premature.

Kim also hoped Clinton could play a mediating role similar to that played by another former Democrat president, Jimmy Carter, who visited Pyongyang in 1994 at the invitation of Kim's predecessor and father, Kim Il-sung, to try to set up a summit between the leaders of North and South Korea, the official said.

SIMILAR ROLE TO CARTER?

That summit fell through with the death the same year of Kim Il-sung.

"Mr. Kim wants Clinton to play a similar role to Carter," said the official.

Carter served as a special envoy for Washington in 1994, traveling to Pyongyang to meet Kim Il-sung and brokering US talks which later led to a pact under which Pyongyang froze its nuclear program.

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il held their first summit in Pyongyang in June 2000 in a giddy atmosphere that suddenly made even the eventual reunification of the two states a possibility.

When Bush took office, he put dialogue with the North on hold and reviewed predecessor Bill Clinton's policy. But during a February visit to Seoul, Bush called for talks and said he had no intention of attacking the North.

A special envoy of Kim Dae-jung visited the North earlier this month, delivering a letter from the South Korean president to Kim Jong-il.

The envoy, Lim Dong-won, said he had told Kim Jong-il not to cling to past hopes linked to the Clinton administration and come to terms with dealing with Bush.

Kim Jong-il told Lim DPRK was ready to receive a US envoy, an specified Jack Pritchard, the State Department's special ambassador for Korean affairs. Pritchard has not yet to make direct contact with DPRK diplomats at the United Nations -- the so-called New York channel -- since Kim's message.