Carter in Pyongyang, American Christian freed
Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - In a diplomatic mission to North Korea, presented as a "private visit", the former U.S. president Jimmy Carter has managed to secure the release of Aijalon Mahle Gomes, a 30 year old American Christian arrested January and sentenced to eight years hard labour for illegally entering the country. The regime’s official agency KCNA. Reports that Carter has already left North Korea with Gomes: the regime, according to official press and the Carter Centre, wanted to make a "humanitarian gesture".
The news of the release of Gomes was greeted with satisfaction by the U.S. government, which underlined in a statement released through State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, that Carter’s visit to North Korea was of a private nature and that “his mission was not organized or suggested by Washington. " Gomes is a former English teacher with deep religious convictions. Until last January, he lived and worked in South Korea on Jan. 25 he entered the communist country, perhaps in protest against the oppressive situation of human rights and religious freedom.
But in his brief mission to Pyongyang, Carter has achieved another important result: the declaration of "availability" by the North Koreans to resume the Six-Party Talks on Korean Peninsula nuclear disarmament. In his meeting with former U.S. president, the regime's number two Kim Yong-nam expressed " North Korea’s desire for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the resumption of six party dialogue”.
Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s visit to China continues. The surprise visit of the dictator, began yesterday with a trip by train overnight, it appears to be a journey linked to his father and founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung. This morning the "Dear Leader" left the north-eastern city of Jilin headed for Changchun, an advanced industrial centre where, according to reports, Kim Jong-il is expected to visit some production plants.
Yesterday, the leader visited the school in Jilin, attended by his father as a student between 1927 and 1930. Observers say the surprise visit - and as always top secret - by Kim to China aims to achieve recognition of his closest ally for his third son Kim Jong-il as his successor, and untangle the knot of the six party dialogue on nuclear proliferation stalled since late 2008.
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