China Urges North Korea to Cultivate More Ties

BEIJING —  China nudged North Korea toward the outside world Tuesday, encouraging its Communist ally to participate in a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders next month and advocating better relations between the two nations that share the Korean peninsula.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin, meeting with North Korea’s No. 2 leader, said Beijing wants more talks between the Koreas, separated since 1945, the official New China News Agency said. China will “support all rational proposals to this end,” Jiang told Kim Yong Nam, president of North Korea’s legislature.

Jiang also offered Chinese grain to help feed North Korea’s starving population and other aid. Famine and economic collapse have left as many as 2 million North Koreans dead since the mid-1990s.

The offers came during Jiang’s pomp-filled visit to North Korea. He has encouraged its reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, to increase contact with the United States and Japan with an eye toward ties that would “eventually normalize relations,” the news agency said.

Jiang’s three-day visit is his first to North Korea in 11 years and the first by a Chinese head of state since Beijing angered the North by opening ties with South Korea in 1992. He was welcomed on his arrival Monday by flower-waving crowds--a remarkable display of official pageantry that showed relations have recovered.

China appears to be trying to ease tensions between the two Koreas, whose diplomatic contacts were suspended in March. In a surprise announcement before Jiang’s visit, the North offered Sunday to resume talks with South Korea.

In an effort to emerge from its isolation and win badly needed aid and investment, North Korea has been opening relations with a number of Western countries.

On Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman suggested that North Korea join the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shanghai in October as well.

“China wants to see North Korea take a greater part in the activities of relevant international organizations,” ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said. “It is for North Korea to decide whether it takes part in APEC activities. If North Korea shows such a desire, then of course we welcome and support that.”