Pat Dollard

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CNN:

North Korean President Kim Jong Il has pardoned and ordered the release of two U.S. journalists, state-run news agency KCNA said Wednesday.

The announcement came after former U.S. President Bill Clinton met with top North Korean officials in Pyongyang to appeal for the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been arrested while reporting from the border between North Korea and China.

“Clinton expressed words of sincere apology to Kim Jong Il for the hostile acts committed by the two American journalists against the DPRK after illegally intruding into it,” the news agency reported. “Clinton courteously conveyed to Kim Jong Il an earnest request of the U.S. government to leniently pardon them and send them back home from a humanitarian point of view.

“The meetings had candid and in-depth discussions on the pending issues between the DPRK and the U.S. in a sincere atmosphere and reached a consensus of views on seeking a negotiated settlement of them.”

The report said Clinton then conveyed a message from President Obama “expressing profound thanks for this and reflecting views on ways of improving the relations between the two countries.”

It added, “The measure taken to release the American journalists is a manifestation of the DPRK’s humanitarian and peace-loving policy.

“The DPRK visit of Clinton and his party will contribute to deepening the understanding between the DPRK and the U.S. and building the bilateral confidence.”

DPRK is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the nation’s official name.

The two American journalists had been held in the reclusive communist nation since their arrest in March.

A statement from their families was posted Tuesday on the Web site lauraandeuna.com:

“The families of Laura Ling and Euna Lee are overjoyed by the news of their pardon. We are so grateful to our government: President Obama, Secretary Clinton and the U.S. State Department for their dedication to and hard work on behalf of American citizens. We especially want to thank President Bill Clinton for taking on such an arduous mission and Vice President Al Gore for his tireless efforts to bring Laura and Euna home.”

Earlier in the day, White House Secretary Robert Gibbs said Clinton was on a “solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans.”

Ling and Lee are reporters for California-based Current TV — a media venture launched by Clinton’s former vice president, Al Gore.

The two were sentenced in June to 12 years in prison on charges of entering the country illegally to conduct a smear campaign. Since the United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, efforts to resolve the issue had been handled through Sweden, which represents U.S. interests in North Korea.

The visit by the former president, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, is now the Obama administration’s secretary of state, came about three weeks after the United States dropped a request that Ling and Lee be released on humanitarian grounds. Instead, the United States was seeking amnesty for the women, Hillary Clinton said.

A plea for amnesty implies forgiveness for some offense, which could have given North Korea the chance to release the women without feeling that its legal system had been slighted, according to analyst Mike Chinoy, an Edgerton senior fellow on Asia at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles.

Prior to the release, Chinoy said, “I suspect that it was made pretty clear in advance that Bill Clinton would be able to return with these two women, otherwise it would be a terrible loss of face for him.”

Clinton’s mission came as the United States and its allies in the region are seeking to push North Korea back into stalled nuclear disarmament talks. North Korea conducted a nuclear bomb test, its second, in May, and has conducted several missile tests since then. The United Nations responded to those tests by tightening and expanding sanctions on the nation.

North Korea and the United States were on opposite sides in the 1950-1953 Korean War and had no regular contacts before a 1994 crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program. North Korea agreed at that time to halt the development of nuclear weapons, but abandoned that accord and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003.

Clinton had considered visiting North Korea in 2000, near the end of his second term as president. His secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, went to Pyongyang in early 2000 to meet with Kim.

The 67-year-old North Korean leader was widely reported to have suffered a stroke a year ago and is believed to be grooming his youngest son, Kim Jon Un, as his successor.

Original story below

Everything about this stinks to High Heaven. Why Bill? Was it because he sent Carter to do the same thing 15 years ago? Why wasn’t this done months ago, instead of months after? Why would Bill convey a message supposedly directly from Obama, just to have Gibbs deny such a request to do so was made? Either Clinton made some up, or Obama is covering some up. Sounds like what those two men respectively do best.

SEOUL (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made a surprise visit to North Korea and met its reclusive leader on Tuesday to try to win freedom for two jailed American journalists in a move that could re-energize nuclear talks.

Clinton, husband of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had what North Korea’s KCNA news agency described as an “exhaustive conversation” over dinner with the ailing Kim Jong-il and top North Korean officials.

Arriving in an unmarked jet on a trip to North Korea he had hoped to take before leaving office in January 2001, Clinton was presented with flowers by a girl dressed in traditional costume before he was led to a black limousine and driven away.

Confusion rose quickly about the delicate diplomatic negotiations he was engaged in. The North Korean news agency said Clinton passed on a verbal message from U.S. President Barack Obama.

“Kim Jong-il expressed thanks for this,” KCNA said of the message. “He welcomed Clinton’s visit to the DPRK (North Korea) and had an exhaustive conversation with him. There was a wide-ranging exchange of views on the matters of common concern.”

But the White House denied Clinton carried a message from Obama. “That’s not true,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in Washington.

Clinton’s objective was to gain the release of two journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling of U.S. media outlet Current TV co-founded by Clinton’s vice president Al Gore.

They were arrested on the North Korea-China border in March and accused of illegal entry. A North Korean court sentenced both of them last month to 12 years hard labor for what it called grave crimes.

SIDE BENEFIT?

Clinton’s visit could have a side benefit of improving the atmosphere between the United States and North Korea that could restart talks over the isolated state’s nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, was among those greeting Clinton — whose administration was reported to have considered bombing the North’s Yongbyon atomic plant in the early 1990s during a prior time of tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

“As soon as he arrives, he will be entering negotiations with the North for the release of the female journalists,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted a source as saying.

Many analysts predicted Pyongyang would use the journalists as leverage to wring concessions from Washington, which sought to place U.N. sanctions on the North for a May nuclear test.

The White House described Clinton’s visit as private.

“While this solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans is on the ground, we will have no comment. We do not want to jeopardize the success of former President Clinton’s mission,” Gibbs said in a statement.

Clinton’s trip followed months of military provocations by the impoverished North, which has turned its back on negotiations with regional powers, including the United States and China, to convince it to give up ambitions to build an atomic arsenal.

In Washington, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said it was not clear whether Clinton had been authorized to discuss policy issues.

“It would be nice if it’s the foundation for a better relationship,” Graham, a prominent member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told NBC’s “Today Show.”

Yun Duk-min of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul said the visit held out the possibility of “a dramatic turnaround by North Korea that could lead to a new phase of negotiations.”

“WRONG SIGNALS”

It is the second time a former U.S. president has headed to the communist state to try to defuse a crisis. Former president Jimmy Carter flew there in 1994 when tensions were running high, again over the North’s nuclear weapons program.

Carter helped broker a deal at that time whereby Pyongyang suspended construction of a 50-megawatt plutonium reactor in exchange for heating oil and other energy aid.

A former White House staffer to Bill Clinton said it seemed likely that Clinton would be successful.

“The fact that he’s there on the ground, I think means that a lot of groundwork has been done. I can’t imagine that he’s not going to leave without those two,” the official said.

Secretary of State Clinton, flying to Kenya for a trade conference, enraged Pyongyang’s leaders last month by likening them to unruly children seeking attention.

One analyst said that was exactly what the former president’s visit was doing — rewarding “bad behavior.”

Clinton’s arrival coincides with mounting speculation over succession in Asia’s only communist dynasty. Several reports suggest that an increasingly frail-looking Kim Jong-il, 67, has settled on his third son to take over.

“It’s just what they (North Korea’s leaders) need,” said B.R. Myers, an expert on the North’s state ideology at the South’s Dongseo University.

It allows the government to show to a domestic audience, facing deepening poverty, that the nuclear weapons program is making the outside world take it more seriously and the visit will be certain to be portrayed as tribute by the United States.

And it will confirm to North Korea that bad behavior will be rewarded further, Myers said. “It sends all the wrong signals.”