THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: While Negotiating Journalists' Release, Clinton and Kim Widened Talks to Security, Regional Concerns
WASHINGTON -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, in more than three hours of discussions with Bill Clinton in Pyongyang, drew the former U.S. president into a wide-ranging discussion of security and regional issues.
Former U.S. officials and diplomats say the meetings, attended by the top ranks of Pyongyang's security establishment, were part of a renewed campaign by Pyongyang to stimulate direct negotiations with Washington over the country's nuclear program.
President Barack Obama and his aides stressed Wednesday that they weren't viewing Mr. Clinton's trip as anything more than a humanitarian mission focused on securing the release of two detained American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling.
Mr. Clinton returned to California Wednesday morning on a private jet with Ms. Lee and Ms. Ling, who had been arrested in March at the Chinese border and later sentenced to 12 years hard labor for illegally entering North Korea. Mr. Clinton's one-day visit secured their release.
"We were very clear this was a humanitarian mission," Mr. Obama said in an interview with MSNBC Wednesday. "We have said to the North Koreans there is a path for improved relations, and it involves them no longer developing nuclear weapons."
Mr. Clinton and his delegation were tight-lipped Wednesday about what transpired during a 75-minute meeting with Mr. Kim on Tuesday. They also attended a two-hour banquet hosted by the North Korean leader and his country's pre-eminent national-security body, the National Defense Commission.
U.S. officials briefed on Mr. Clinton's mission, however, are already outlining a broad discussion with Mr. Kim that focused on significantly more than just the two imprisoned Americans.
These U.S. officials indicated that Mr. Clinton expressed to Mr. Kim the necessity that his regime end a nuclear program that's feared to be stoking a broader arms race across Asia and the Middle East. >>> Jay Solomon | Thursday, August 06, 2009
