BEIJING - A group of businessmen led by former President Jimmy Carter, former State said Monday that they will focus on the shortages of food, rights of man and denuclearization when they travel to the North Korea this week.
A delegation of the group "The Elders" of the former State leaders will visit Pyongyang Tuesday to ease tensions on the North Korea nuclear weapons programs, they told a press conference in Beijing.
The Group of four members, headed by Carter, includes the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, Prime Minister, ex-norvégien Gro Harlem Brundtland and former Irish President Mary Robinson.
In addition to discussing ways to advance multi-nation talks on denuclearization of the Korea of the North, Carter said he would seek to how facilitate sanctions on Pyongyang exacerbated a serious food crisis.
"This is a horrible situation and we hope to encourage other countries to help alleviate (the food crisis), including the South Korea, which cut all supplies of food materials to the North Koreans,"Carter said of the journalists."
"When there is an entire people sanctions, people suffer the most, and leaders are suffering least."
Robinson said one-third of the children of the Korea of the North suffered from delayed growth due to a lack of food, while almost 3.5 million people were vulnerable to the crisis growing which has seen the average food rations cut in half this year to 700 calories per day and per person.
"It is very, very important to ensure that women, children and elderly people do not suffer because of a political, said Robinson." We will be very well be highlighting this.
"We believe really that humanitarian issues and human rights are also very important."
Food agencies of the United Nations, which recently visited the North say more than six million people – a quarter of the population - urgently need food aid.
Carter said the delegation hopes to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, but for the moment such a meeting has not been announced. The trip was organized at the invitation of senior leaders of the North Korea, he said.
The delegation was to meet with Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi China and other Chinese experts on the North Korea later Monday. The group, which will publish a report on their findings, will fly to Seoul Thursday.
Talks between the two Koreas, China, United States, Japan and Russia six-party disarmament became stalled since Pyongyang was released in April 2008 and made its second nuclear test staged a month later.
Cross-border tensions have been exacerbated when the Korea of Northern shelled a border in November Island, killing four South Koreans, including two civilians, and stimulate the fears of war.
The first attack against civilians since the 1950-53 weeks Korea war after Pyongyang revealed an apparently operational uranium enrichment plant to American experts visit.
The North that it was a peaceful but experts energy project said that he could be reconfigured to produce weapons-grade uranium.
Carter has Korea of the North before mediation. In 1994, he visited Pyongyang after the entry to the United States, close to the war with the Korea in the North over its nuclear weapons program.
Last August the winner of the Nobel Prize for peace 2002 went to Pyongyang to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes of American nationality imprisoned.
Some analysts argue that Carter will also seek to guarantee the freedom of a Korean-American detained by the North since last November who faces trial for crimes not specified against the nation.
A source said that the man was involved in missionary work.
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