The son of evangelist Billy Graham participated in talks with North Korea's foreign minister in a friendly atmosphere Wednesday, Pyongyang's official news agency said.
Graham, who heads relief agency Samaritan's Purse, arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday to deliver aid, saying he hoped his visit would "play the role of a bridge for better relations" between the U.S. and North Korea, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
Graham talked with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun "in an amicable atmosphere," KCNA said in a one-sentence dispatch.
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Graham's visit marks the first by an American aid agency in months.
In March, North Korea began refusing American food shipments and booted out all U.S. aid groups operating in the country. Then it launched a long-range missile and conducted a nuclear test, drawing a raft of U.N. sanctions. In response to the measures, North Korea pulled out of international disarmament talks.
But more recently, the North has indicated it would be willing to restart those negotiations if it were able to hold direct talks with Washington — a long-held goal of the reclusive regime. In an apparent attempt to bolster its negotiating position ahead of any talks, the North fired several missiles off its eastern coast on Monday.
North Korea has suffered chronic food shortages since flooding and mismanagement destroyed its economy in the mid-1990s. Widespread famine is believed to have killed some 2 million North Koreans, with more than 6 million North Koreans needing food handouts, according to the U.N. World Food Program.
Samaritan's Purse said on its Web site that Graham will oversee the delivery of $190,000 in equipment and supplies for a new dental school in Pyongyang, meet with high-level officials and visit one of three hospitals where the group has installed electricity generators.
Billy Graham's family has had relations with the communist North for years. The senior Graham went to North Korea in 1992 and in 1994 at the invitation of late North Korean President Kim Il Sung, father of current leader Kim Jong Il.
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