WASHINGTON: Veteran former US politician and diplomat Bill Richardson offered on Friday to visit North Korea to secure the release of three detained Americans and a Canadian after US university student Otto Warmbier was brought back in a coma.
Richardson, a former New Mexico governor and congressman who visited North Korea in the 1990s and sought the release of detained Americans, said he made the proposal in a letter to the North Korean mission to the United Nations.
“I have proposed that as of today,” Richardson said, adding that he argued in the letter it was in North Korea’s interest to free the detainees unconditionally, “in the light of its failure to properly take care and handle” Warmbier’s case.
Doctors say the 22-year-old university student who was returned to the United States this week after being held in North Korea for 17 months has a severe brain injury and is in a state of “unresponsive wakefulness.”
Richardson said he and members of his foundation had met with North Korean diplomats 20 times in the past year to try to secure the release of Warmbier and the others — Korean-Americans Tony Kim, Kim Dong Chul and Kim Hak Song and Korean-Canadian Hyeon Soo Lim.
He said the foundation’s executive director travelled to North Korea in November and proposed that Richardson travel there for the purpose, but the North Koreans did not respond.
Richardson said he had yet to inform the Trump administration about his letter, but had briefed the State Department and White House in recent weeks on his past efforts.
In 1996, Richardson secured the release of a 26-year-old American, Evan Hunziker, who was held for three months in North Korea on spying charges.
He called on the administration to find a way to ensure Warmbier “gets the best medical care to see if he can be revived”.
— Reuters
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