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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will likely visit North Korea next month to broker rapprochement in U.S. relations with the reclusive communist state, which have chilled over the North‘s nuclear and missile programs and other provocations, a diplomatic source here said Wednesday.
“It is highly likely that ex-President Carter will travel to North Korea in about a month as the North Korean mission in New York has been arranging for the visit,” said the source, who requested anonymity. Carter is expected to be accompanied by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other prominent figures who are ready to be middlemen in U.S. relations with the impoverished but nuclear-armed state.
Carter visited Pyongyang in August and brought back Aijalon Gomes of Boston, who had been sentenced to eight years in a labor camp and fined about $700,000 for illegally entering North Korea months earlier. Carter was expected to play a role in mending U.S. relations with the North at the time, but he could not meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Carter brokered a bilateral U.S.-North Korea deal during the first North Korean nuclear crisis in 1994, which led to the Geneva Agreed Framework later that year.
(Yonhap News Agency)
　
N.Korea repeats warning over S.Korea’s psychological warfare
North Korea threatened Wednesday that it is ready to launch fire and enter action at any time against South Korean activists from some 20 defectors’ organizations to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border later this week from front-line Baengnyeong Island in memory of the sinking of the Cheonan last year.
Responding to a question by a reporter of the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a North Korean commander denounced such psychological warfare as “an act of war,” warning fire at South Korean sites for propaganda. The organizations, however, said they would fly the leaflets as planned.
　　
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