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Jimmy Carter arrives in Pyongyang

 

Xinhua, April 26, 2011

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, accompanied by three other former state leaders, arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday morning aboard a private jet for a three-day visit at easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

At the airport, Carter was greeted by Ri Yong Ho, vice foreign minister of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Carter, along with former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland and former Irish President Mary Robinson, received flowers from four young DPRK girls and boys.

The quartet of former leaders smiled and waved hands to the reporters from the DPRK, China and Russia present at the airport, but delivered no speech.

The reporters were only allowed to stand within a designated area and couldn't get close to Carter.

Five minutes later, the motorcade of the delegation left the airport.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2002, said on Monday that the visit will concentrate on Pyongyang's nuclear program and food-aid needs.

Carter, who served as U.S. president from 1977 to 1981, made a historic trip to the DPRK for the first time in 1994 to help defuse a crisis over the country's nuclear program.

He paid a three-day private visit to Pyongyang last August to secure the release of an American citizen, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who had been detained by the DPRK for entering the country illegally.