SEOUL, South Korea South Korean media said Wednesday that former President Jimmy Carter has departed on his mission to North Korea that U.S. officials say is aimed at bringing home an imprisoned American.
Carter departed the U.S. on Tuesday for North Korea aboard a civilian jet along with his wife, Rosalynn, and Carter Center President John Hardman, South Koreas Yonhap news agency reported citing an unidentified diplomatic source in the U.S.
Seoul-based YTN television network carried a similar report, saying Carter was to arrive in Pyongyang later Wednesday.
Carters trip is aimed at gaining the freedom of Aijalon Mahli Gomes who has been detained in North Korea for entering the country illegally in January, U.S. officials said late Monday.
North Korea agreed to release Gomes if Carter were to come to bring him home, a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press. The former president was expected to spend a single night in North Korea and return with Gomes on Thursday, a second U.S. official said.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The senior U.S. official stressed that Carter was not representing the U.S. government as was the case when former President Bill Clinton traveled to Pyongyang last summer to secure the release of two detained female American journalists. No U.S. officials were to travel with Carter, the official said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said he would not comment on Carters reported trip.
We will continue to withhold comment. We do not want to jeopardize the prospects for Mr. Gomes to be returned home by discussing any details related to private humanitarian efforts to get him released and back here safely to the United States, Crowley told reporters Tuesday.
Staff at the Atlanta-based Carter Center could provide no information.
Gomes, from Boston, was sentenced in April to eight years of hard labor and fined $700,000 for the trespassing and an unspecified hostile act.
It was still not known why Gomes � who had been teaching English in South Korea � entered North Korea. Still, Gomes had attended rallies in Seoul in support of Robert Park, a fellow Christian who deliberately crossed into North Korea from China to call attention to the Norths human rights record. Park was expelled from North Korea about 40 days after entering the country last Christmas.
U.S. officials have pressed for Gomes freedom on humanitarian grounds, citing his health and reports that Gomes has attempted suicide while in custody. North Korea, however, had ruled out his release amid tensions over Marchs deadly sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the country. North Korea flatly denies any involvement in the sinking that killed 46 sailors.
Carter made a historic trip to North Korea when Clinton was in office in 1994, which led to a landmark disarmament deal on the Norths nuclear weapons program. Carter said at the time that the trip was his idea but that he had full support from Clinton.
The deal alleviated tension on the peninsula but eventually fell apart in 2002 after the U.S. accused the North of running a secret uranium enrichment program, touching off the continuing nuclear standoff.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.
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