SEOUL (AFP) — Declassified Chinese papers reveal North Korea's late founding leader Kim Il-Sung expressed his desire for denuclearisation just months before backing China's atomic ambitions, a report said Sunday.
Yonhap news agency, citing a Chinese dossier from Beijing's national archives, said Kim's wish to rid the world of nuclear weapons was set out in a letter to then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1964.
But in correspondence the following year, Kim congratulated China on its successful atomic tests and advocated Beijing's nuclear development as a defensive measure against US nuclear threats, Yonhap said.
"Eternal President" Kim Il-Sung, who died in 1994, is the father of Kim Jong-Il , the current leader of the communist state, a self-declared nuclear power since a 2006 atomic test.
In a declassified letter dated October 30, 1964, Kim senior told Zhou that North Korea favoured banning and destroying all nuclear weapons.
"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) has consistently maintained that nuclear weapons should be completely banned and nuclear weapons should be thoroughly destroyed," Kim said in the letter, according to Yonhap.
"The Korean people will stand shoulder to shoulder with the peace-loving people of the whole world for the realisation of the complete ban and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons."
However, Kim Il-Sung wrote on May 17, 1965 to then Chinese leader Mao Zedong following Beijing's second successful nuclear test: "China's achievements will play a big role in coping with nuclear threats from the imperialist US and protecting the peace of the people of socialist countries."
The letters were included in diplomatic documents declassified by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Yonhap said.
A Chinese foreign ministry statement said the time needed to process an application to see the documents was 20 working days.
A six-nation forum involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan last year reached agreement on a broad denuclearisation pact for North Korea.
Under the agreement, the North, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, was to disable the plants at Yongbyon that produced weapons-grade plutonium and declare all its nuclear activities. In return it would receive energy aid and diplomatic benefits.
During an inter-Korean summit last year, Kim Jong-Il said he would eventually give up nuclear weapons to realise his father's "dying wish." Other Pyongyang leaders have made similar remarks in public.
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