Bill Clinton To Visit North Korea?

A North Korean government officials says North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has invited former U.S. President Bill Clinton to visit Pyongyang to play a mediating role and to cool rhetoric from Washington.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to specify whether Kim had issued the invitation to Mr. Clinton before or after President Bush's speech in January in which he branded North Korea 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.

During the Clinton administration, relations between the two Cold War foes began to thaw, with then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright paying a visit to Pyongyang to explore the possibility of a visit by the president.

The Clinton visit did not take place, as the assessment then was that such a high-level trip would be premature.

There was no immediate comment from either the White House or the State Department in the United States, where it was late Sunday. The Bush administration has in the past dismissed suggestions of mediation by former presidents, including Mr. Clinton.

There was also no immediate reaction from South Korea, which has restarted dialogue with North Korea. Dozens of family members separated for half a century were meeting on Monday at a North Korean resort for a second day as part of the resumed exchanges.

The official in Pyongyang said Kim hoped Mr. Clinton could play a mediating role similar to that played by former President 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.

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.

Mr. Carter served as a special envoy for Washington in 1994, traveling to Pyongyang to meet Kim Il-sung and brokering U.S. 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 shifted the question of eventual reunification from pipedream to distant possibility.

When President Bush took office, he put dialogue with the North on hold and reviewed predecessor Clinton's policy. During a February visit to Seoul, Bush renewed a call for talks and said he had no intention of attacking the North. But he criticised the North for its human rights record.

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 to cling to past hopes linked to the Clinton administration and come to terms with dealing with President Bush.

Kim Jong-il told Lim North Korea was ready to receive a U.S. envoy, and specified Jack Pritchard, the U.S. State Department's special ambassador for Korean affairs. Since Kim's message, Pritchard has not made direct contact with North Korean diplomats at the United Nations - the so-called New York diplomatic channel.

Russia's mediating role has also been growing. Two senior Russian officials have held talks with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in as many weeks.

By Teruaki Ueno