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Albright to Visit to DPRK This Weekend
Starting a new chapter in post-Cold War history as the clock ticks down her time in office, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced on Wednesday that she will travel to DPRK this weekend.
She aims to set up a visit by US President Clinton before his successor takes over in January.
``We are leaving for North Korea on Sunday. We'll have meetings in Pyongyang Monday and Tuesday. I've had confirmation of my meeting with Kim Jong-il,'' she told reporters flying home with her from the Middle East, before refuelling in Ireland.
Albright met DPRK Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun for the first time at an Asian summit in Bangkok in July.
Albright said she would follow up her visit to Pyongyang on Wednesday in Seoul, capital of South Korea which is a firm ally of the United States and host to 37,000 US troops.
She is likely to get a chance to congratulate President Kim Dae-jung in person for winning the Nobel peace prize for his ''sunshine policy'' of engaging his neighbor, and will definitely attend trilateral talks with Japan on North Korea.
Although no U.S. president or secretary of state has visited Pyongyang, Kim Jong-il sent his deputy to Washington this month in a sign that North Korea calls for transformation.
To Albright, a scholar of transition in central and eastern Europe and a key driving force behind efforts to topple Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, little is more satisfying than seeing another curtain fall.
For the first time, she will see the other side of the DMZ or demilitarized zone, an eerie, land mine-filled expanse which to the peninsula is as powerful a symbol of division as the no-man's land erased by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
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