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Monday, April 19, 2004

Kim's visit was reported by South Korean media but not confirmed by China's Foreign Ministry, which in the past has released information on the secretive leader's visits only after he returns home.

Early Monday, a convoy of armored cars with tinted windows could be seen carrying a delegation from the main Beijing train station to a government guesthouse where Chinese leaders usually receive visiting leaders. Kim reportedly traveled to China by train.

Kim reportedly talked with President Hu Jintao over lunch about North Korea's nuclear weapons program and asked for economic aid, South Korean media said, citing unidentified sources. They said the visit would last four days.

Cheney, who met with Hu last week, prodded China to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, citing new evidence that it has atomic weapons.

"Time is not on our side," a senior U.S. official quoted Cheney as telling Chinese leaders.

Washington wants China to use its leverage as the North's last major ally and the leading supplier of food and energy aid for its ailing economy.

The U.S. official said Cheney gave Chinese leaders information from a top Pakistani nuclear scientist suggesting that North Korea had at least three nuclear devices and was capable of making them from both plutonium and enriched uranium.

China says it wants a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and has hosted two rounds of talks on the issue with the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia.

Beijing is trying to organize a third round within the next few months.

North Korea says it needs a "nuclear deterrent" to prevent a U.S. invasion, but has indicated it would halt its program in exchange for aid and U.S. security guarantees.

Washington is insisting on a "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling" of all of North Korea's nuclear facilities.

China's Foreign Ministry said it had "no information" on Kim's meeting with the Chinese leader, which would be the first since Hu became president last year. When Kim visited China in 2000 and 2001, neither side announced the trips in advance.

A special train carrying Kim and his entourage of about 40 senior party and government officials arrived in Beijing in the morning, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

Kim was scheduled to meet other leaders including Premier Wen Jiabao and former President Jiang Zemin, who heads the powerful Communist Party commission that runs China's military, South Korea's state-run KBS-TV said.

Since taking over power in 1994 from his late father President Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il has struggled to revive the impoverished North's economy, monitoring China's capitalist experiments.

In his trip in 2001, Kim visited Shanghai's stock exchange and foreign joint-venture companies.

During this visit, he was to tour Zhongguancun Technology Park in northwestern Beijing, the center of China's infant communications and high-technology industries, Yonhap said.

© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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