Kim Jong Il Meets St. Petersburg Governor on Economic CooperationKim Jong Il, leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), met Russian St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev in the city Monday to discuss ways of boosting the economic cooperation between DPRK and the Russian region.The St. Petersburg region and DPRK have great potential for economic cooperation, especially in the fields of machine building and energy industry, and St. Petersburg is ready to provide military and fishing boats for DPRK, Yakovlev told Kim at their meeting in the Smolny Palace. Yakovlev also proposed that the two sides cooperate in the sphere of optics, laser equipment, instrument and missile building, information technologies and telecommunications, according to Russian mass media. The governor said his city's higher schools are ready to enroll DPRK students for training in a wide range of technical and humanitarian professions. He promised to offer assistance in organizing guest performances in DPRK. After the conversation, Kim, who arrived in St. Petersburg on Monday morning by special train following a two-day official visit to Moscow, visited the Lenin Museum in the Smolny palace, the Ermitage Museum (Winter Palace) and the Leningrad Metal Plant. The visit to the plant began with a meeting with its director, Viktor Shevchenko, who told Kim about the enterprise, its products and prospects for the future. In an exclusive interview with Itar-Tass, the plant's first deputy executive director Valery Kondratyev told Itar-Tass that the plant is ready to cooperate with Pyongyang, including in the field of nuclear power engineering. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |