The Hill News

North Korea's second-in-command leader, Kim Yong Nam, has told former President Jimmy Carter that his state is open to resuming the so-called "six-party talks" on its nuclear program, according to the Associated Press.

The AP also reported that North Korea's official news agency had said the state wants the Korean peninsula denuclearized.

The six-party talks began in 2003 and include China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States.

Their most recent phase ended in 2009, when North Korea responded to a United Nations reprimand of its missile launch on April 5 by declaring it would no longer participate. The state also expelled U.N. inspectors at that time and announced that it would resume its nuclear program.

Carter was in North Korea this week to retrieve an American, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who was impris! oned there in January for entering the country illegally.

North Korean media reported that Carter apologized to Kim Yong Nam for Gomes's entering the country, and he also met with Kim Gye Gwan, North Korea's chief negotiator at the six-party talks.

Gomes had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor before he was granted amnesty by authorities in Pyongyang. 

The Carter Center noted in a statement Thursday night that the visit was a private operation and not an effort of the U.S. government.

"At the request of President Carter, and for humanitarian purposes, Mr. Gomes was granted amnesty," it said. "It is expected that Mr. Gomes ! will be returned to Boston, Mass., early Friday afternoon, to ! be reuni ted with his mother and other members of his family."

State department spokesman P.J. Crowley expressed relief that Gomes was returning to his family.

"The U.S. and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations and as the case of Mr. Gomes illustrates, travel to North Korea is not routine or risk-free," he said. 

Carter has acted as a private diplomat to North Korea in the past. A meeting between the former president and the late Kim Il Sung in 1994 led to an agreement by which North Korea said it would convert its nuclear facilities into power plants, but which effectively ended in 2003.