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| N Korea head 'meets China envoy' | N Korea head 'meets China envoy' |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il has met a visiting Chinese envoy, China's Xinhua news agency reports. | North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il has met a visiting Chinese envoy, China's Xinhua news agency reports. |
| Wang Jiarui, a senior Chinese Communist Party official, met Kim Jong-il on a visit to the capital, Pyongyang. | Wang Jiarui, a senior Chinese Communist Party official, met Kim Jong-il on a visit to the capital, Pyongyang. |
| The North Korea leader suffered a suspected stroke in August, since when he has not appeared at any major events. | The North Korea leader suffered a suspected stroke in August, since when he has not appeared at any major events. |
| Photographs of the 66-year-old visiting factories and farms have been released, but they have been undated. | Photographs of the 66-year-old visiting factories and farms have been released, but they have been undated. |
| The meeting with Mr Wang is Mr Kim's first reported meeting with a foreign dignitary since August. | |
| Chinese media said Mr Wang has met Mr Kim several times in the past. | |
| Succession muddle | |
| Speculation about who might replace Mr Kim as North Korea's leader peaked recently with conflicting Japanese and South Korean media reports suggesting Mr Kim's eldest son and third son respectively. | |
| Other suggestions have included Mr Kim's military intelligence chief and his brother-in-law. | |
| Mr Kim inherited the leadership from his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. | |
| The reclusive state's leadership is being watched closely as a new administration in the US comes into office. | |
| Six-party talks, involving the US, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and North Korea have stalled over US concerns about how to verify the North's past nuclear activities, including the US demand that North Korea disclose its full nuclear arsenal. | |
| A South Korean nuclear envoy visited North Korea earlier this month. | |
| A North Korean spokesman recently insisted it would not show all its nuclear weapons unless a simultaneous verification took place in South Korea. | |
| "We will never do such a thing as showing our nuclear weapons first even in 100 years unless the US hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are fundamentally terminated," the spokesman said. | |
| Observers note that while the North may be sending a strong message to President Barack Obama in Washington, it is not necessarily hostile. | |
| They recently noted the unusual lack of criticism directed at the US in the North's New Year message. |