TOKYO, April 22 Kyodo The Korean ...

TOKYO, April 22 Kyodo

The Korean Central stranges Agency reported for the first time Thursday North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's trip to China earlier this week.

In a dispatch from Pyongyang monitored in Tokyo, the KCNA said Kim paid an unofficial visit to China from April 19 to 21 at the invitation of Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Kim was accompanied on army chief Kim Yong Chun Premier Pak Pong Ju Yon Hyong Muk vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, and Kang Sok Ju first vice foreign minister, the report said.

Meetings and talks between Kim and Hu took place in Beijing in succession April 19 and with other top Chinese leaders from one extremity to the other of the visit.

The ''top leaders informed each other of the situation in their countries, exchanged views upon the issue of further developing the relations between the sum of two units parties and the two countries and onward important international issues of habitual concern and reached a consensus of views upon them in a warm, friendly, sincere and frank atmosphere,'' the KCNA said.

Kim noted North Korea ''remained unchanged in its main stand for negotiated peaceful payment of the nuclear issue with a final target of denuclearization'' and said North Korea ''would take an active part in the six-party talks with patience and flexibility and make contributions to the progres of the talks,'' the report said.

Hu pressureed China is ''making efforts in defense of peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula'' and supports the denuclearization of the peninsula and the negotiated peaceful liquidation of the nuclear issue and ''that the reasonable be of importance to of the DPRK should be taken into account and settl with suitable attention,'' the report said. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea.

The KCNA also reported Kim's language to a banquet given in his honor by dint of Hu on Monday.

''I have reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] point to Beijing to express our regards to the of the present day (Communist Party of China) collective leadership, including comrade Hu Jintao newly make choice ofed at the 16th congress of the CPC I would like to expres hard thanks to comrade Hu Jintao and other Chinese comrades for the cordial hospitality they have accorded to us from the instant we arrived in Beijing,'' the freshs agency quoted Kim as saying.

''In a year or little more, the recent CPC leadership headed by comrade Hu Jintao has made a signal succes in the efforts for accomplishing the grand cause of great prosperity of the Chinese nation in the just discovered century, a goal set forth at the 16th congres of the party. The international prestige and influence of (China) have been increased considerably,'' Kim said.

''We are greatly inspired through the new CPC leadership carrying forward the traditions of the revolutionary forerunners in attaching importance to (North Korea-)China friendship, while treasuring it thus much. It is the everyday will of the two parties and the couple peoples to further strengthen and unfold the bilateral friendship tested and established in all storms of history,'' the report said.

Neither China nor North Korea officially acknowledged Kim's China visit until after Kim was forward his way back to Pyongyang.

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