Talks bid to free reporters jailed in North Korea

Senior US politicians were discussing a bid to negotiate the release of two American journalists sentenced to 12 years’ hard labour in North Korea as the women’s families made an emotional appeal today.

A joint statement by relatives of reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee expressed the hope that the governments of the US and North Korea “can come to an agreement that will result in (their) release”.

“We ask the government of North Korea to show compassion and grant Laura and Euna clemency,” said the statement released by the family’s spokeswoman Alanna Zahn.

New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who helped win the release of Americans from North Korea in the 1990s, said he was “ready to do anything” the Obama administration asked.

Another possible negotiator, if the US government approves, is former vice president Al Gore, who founded the Current TV venture the reporters work for.

The journalists were arrested on March 17 near the China-North Korea border. It is unclear whether they tried to sneak into the North or if aggressive border guards crossed into Chinese territory and grabbed them, as has happened before. A cameraman and their local guide escaped.

Ms Ling and Ms Lee were reporting about the trafficking of women at the time of their arrest.

The North accused the reporters of unspecified “hostile acts” and illegally entering the country, but the formal charges against them were unclear. Their trial began on Thursday and foreigners were not allowed to observe the proceedings.

The North’s official news agency said the women committed a “grave crime” and would be sentenced to 12 years of “reform through labour”.

A senior Obama administration official said Mr Richardson and Mr Gore had contacted the White House and State Department about potential next steps, including possibly sending an envoy to try to negotiate the release of Ms Lee, 36, and Ms Ling, 32.

But the official stressed no decisions had been made on how to proceed and said neither Mr Gore nor Mr Richardson had been asked to go.

Asked yesterday if Washington would send an envoy to the North, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said the government was “pursuing every possible approach that we can consider in order to persuade the North Koreans to release them and send these young women home”.

She said the reporters’ case and Washington’s efforts to punish North Korea for its recent nuclear test were “entirely separate matters”.

“We think the imprisonment, trial and sentencing of Laura and Euna should be viewed as a humanitarian matter,” Mrs Clinton said. “We hope that the North Koreans will grant clemency and deport them.”

The reclusive North is probably less interested in having the women sent to its gulag, where poorly-fed inmates often do backbreaking work in factories, coal mines and rice paddies.

Instead, Pyongyang will probably try to use them as bargaining chips in an increasingly tense stand-off with the US over the North’s recent nuclear and missile tests.

President Barack Obama “is deeply concerned by the reported sentencing of the two American citizen journalists by North Korean authorities, and we are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release”, said deputy White House spokesman William Burton.

Mr Richardson, who also travelled to North Korea in 2007 to bring back the remains of Americans killed in the Korean War, said the journalists were part of a “high-stakes poker game”.

Now that the legal process had been completed, he said he believed talks for their release could begin, with some kind of a political pardon as a goal.

He said the sentence was harsher than expected but added that the fact that espionage was not mentioned was a good sign.

For several days, rumours have been swirling that Mr Gore would fly to North Korea to negotiate the reporters’ release. But Mr Gore has not commented on a possible trip and has stayed silent about the case in general.

Victor Cha, who was a senior Asia adviser on former president George Bush’s national security council, said a high-level envoy such as Mr Gore should be sent to negotiate the release of the Americans.

“North Koreans care a great deal about public face and sending someone of Gore’s stature would be an eminently credible humanitarian mission,” he said.

North Korea wants to be treated like a legitimate nuclear state and hopes to draw Washington into direct negotiations about normal relations.

But Washington has refused to endorse such a status for an unpredictable nation with a history of terrorism, ripping up agreements and sharing its nuclear know-how with nations hostile to America.

Meanwhile Pyongyang is believed to be preparing another long-range missile test at a new launchpad.

Their families’ statement said “if they wandered across the border without permission, we apologise on their behalf”.

It also expressed concern about the women’s health, noting that Ms Ling had a serious medical condition, an ulcer, while Ms Lee’s four-year-old daughter was showing “signs of anguish over the absence of her mother”.