UN, DPRK deliver contradictory messages on Ban's visit to Pyongyang

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 20:43, November 18, 2015

PYONGYANG/UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 18 -- The official KCNA news agency of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) disclosed that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit Pyongyang next Monday, which was denied by the UN Tuesday night.

The KCNA told Xinhua on Wednesday that Ban will start a four-day visit in Pyongyang next Monday and will arrive at Sunan International Airport while his itinerary is yet to be confirmed.

According to the state-run media, Ban's upcoming Pyongyang visit was also confirmed by another UN official residing in the DPRK who spoke on condition of anonymity.

However, a UN spokesman said Tuesday night that the secretary-general will not visit the DPRK next week.

'The secretary-general will not be traveling to the DPRK next week,' the spokesman said in an email message to the press. 'He will be in New York most of next week and then travel to Malta for the Commonwealth Summit.'

'From there, he will go directly to Paris to attend COP21,' also known as the 2015 Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the spokesman added.

The COP21 opens at Le Bourget, north Paris, on Nov. 30. More than 40,000 representatives from 195 countries will participate.

'The secretary-general has repeatedly said that he is willing to play any constructive role, including traveling to the DPRK, in an effort to work for peace, stability and dialogue on the Korean Peninsula,' the spokesman added.

Citing an unidentified high-level UN source, Yonhap said the secretary-general would visit Pyongyang in his official capacity as secretary-general later this week without giving a precise date for the visit.

The secretary-general had been scheduled to visit the DPRK in May this year, when Pyongyang invited him to tour the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which lies just over the inter-Korean border.

South Korean media said Ban expressed his readiness in late September to pay a visit to the DPRK to its Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, who was then in New York attending the 70th UN General Assembly.

Ban served as South Korea's minister of foreign affairs and trade before he started working as the UN head in 2007. Analysts say his tour to the DPRK, if realized, would boost inter-Korean relations and peace on the Korean Peninsula. The issue of nuclear weapons might also be discussed during the visit.

On Sunday, the spokesman said that he has 'no further comment' on a report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency that the secretary-general will visit the DPRK this week.

'As for any future plans by the secretary-general to travel to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, we have no further comment at this time,' the spokesman said in a separate email to the press.

If Ban makes the trip, it would be his first visit to the DPRK as the UN chief, and he would be the third UN secretary-general to visit the DPRK after Kurt Waldheim in 1979 and Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1993.