Xi visits Kim ahead of talks with Trump
 

PYONGYANG: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pyongyang on Thursday on a historic visit to burnish an uneasy alliance, with the two men each facing challenges of their own with US President Donald Trump.Xi is the first Chinese president to visit North Korea in 14 years, after relations between the Cold War era allies deteriorated over Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations and Beijing’s subsequent backing of UN sanctions.But as he embarked on a flurry of diplomacy last year, Kim ensured that Xi—the leader of his country’s key diplomatic supporter and main provider of trade and aid—was the first head of state he met. The North Korean leader has now visited his older ally four times in China and Pyongyang has been increasingly keen for Xi to reciprocate, while according to diplomats Beijing has been biding its time to see how nuclear talks between Kim and Trump play out.But Beijing’s own trade negotiations with Washington hit a wall last month and some analysts say Xi is now looking for leverage ahead of his meeting with Trump at next week’s G20 summit in Japan.“When both China & North Korea are confronted by US, they have a lot to discuss with each other,” Lijian Zhao, the deputy chief of mission of China’s embassy in Pakistan, wrote on Twitter.Pyongyang wants to demonstrate to Trump that it has China’s support with the nuclear negotiations at a standstill after Trump and Kim’s second summit broke up without a deal.At their formal talks, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, Kim told Xi that the North had taken “many positive measures to avoid a tense situation” over the past year, “but has not received positive responses from the relevant parties”. “This is not what the DPRK wants to see,” CCTV’s voiceover cited him as adding.According to Chinese state media Xi told Kim that he “positively evaluated” the North’s efforts and was “willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with the DPRK and all relevant parties”.Kim met Xi at Pyongyang airport as he began a two-day state visit with his wife Peng Liyuan, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and other officials, television images showed.Portraits of the two leaders stood outside the terminal, pictures showed, and a 21-gun salute was fired before the pair drove into the capital together, standing in a convertible Mercedes Benz past tens of thousands of cheering residents lining the streets and more waving from their windows.Pyongyang always puts on an impressive show when a foreign leader visits but in an unprecedented move, Xi was welcomed at the Kumsusan Palace, the mausoleum where the preserved bodies of the North’s founder Kim Il Sung and his successor Kim Jong Il—the grandfather and father of the current leader—lie in state.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/com/cwEr/~4/Md3t8PFdARM

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