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ULAN-UDE: North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Il is on Wednesday expected to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a Siberian military base for secrecy-shrouded summit talks on energy and food aid.
The summit between Kim, 69, and Medvedev, 45, is the highlight of the reclusive North Korean leader’s week-long train ride through Russia’s Far East and Siberia, his third visit to the giant neighbour in the last decade.
The meeting is expected to take place at the Sosnovy Bor (Pine Forest) military base outside the city of Ulan Ude some 5,550 kilometres east of Moscow, a regional official familiar with the planning told AFP.
The summit marks a major milestone in ties between the Cold War-era allies and gives chance for the Kremlin to burnish its diplomatic credentials as a negotiator capable of dealing with so-called pariah regimes.
Arriving in Ulan-Ude aboard his armoured train on the fourth-day of his week-long Trans-Siberian journey, Kim visited a plant making assault jets and heavy helicopters.
In a nod to Kim’s concerns about personal safety, the Kremlin imposed a virtual blanket ban on information about the plans and itinerary of the North Korean leader.
The talks however will hardly bring any foreign policy breakthroughs or firm economic deals, analysts say.
“It is a ritual,” Alexei Malashenko, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, told AFP.
Kim is expected to seek Moscow’s help in trying to start up stalled talks on North Korea’s nuclear disarmament amid signs the isolated state is seeking to reach out to the world as it battles food shortages.
Pyongyang stormed out of the six-party negotiations – grouping the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia – in April 2009 and conducted its second nuclear test a month later, but has expressed a desire to return to the forum.
Analysts say the two leaders are unlikely to reach any breakthrough in the nuclear talks where much depends on the position of the United States and South Korea, long irritated by Pyongyang’s erratic behaviour.
Kim and Medvedev are also expected to discuss energy and infrastructure projects involving both Koreas.
They include a long-stalled plan for a trans-Korean railroad, the construction of an electricity transmission line between the two countries and, most importantly, a pipeline carrying Russian gas to South Korea via the North.
Following talks with his South Korean counterpart Kim Sung-Hwan earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russian gas giant Gazprom was in concrete talks with the energy companies of both Koreas.
Gazprom and South Korea’s state-run Korea Gas Corporation signed a memorandum of understading on gas supplies in 2008 and a Gazprom delegation went for talks to North Korea this past July.
In a sign that power supplies may also figure on the agenda, Kim on Sunday made a stop in the Amur region where he visited the 2,000 megawatt-strong Bureiskaya hydro power station, the largest in the Far East.
The Kremlin says any opportunity must be seized to engage the Stalinist state in dialogue and trilateral projects could help promote stability on the divided Korean peninsula.
Kim is also likely to seek more economic and food aid from Moscow amid fears of a hunger crisis.
Moscow said on the eve of Kim’s arrival that it was sending up to 50,000 tonnes of wheat to North Korea.
Military cooperation is also likely to be addressed.
A delegation of Russian military officials had on Monday arrived in North Korea for a week-long visit with an eye to boosting military and naval cooperation, the defense ministry said.
The Stalinist state’s ties to Russia date back to the Soviet times, although they cooled after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Kim last travelled to Russia in 2002 when he met then president Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok. In May, Kim visited China, a third visit in just over a year to his country’s sole major ally and economic lifeline.
