US Urges North Korea to Set Free its Journalists

US President Barack Obama and his top national security aides have urged North Korea to set free “on humanitarian grounds” the two US journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for entering North Korea territory.

Administration officials, however, think that the secluded state could use the harsh punishment as a negotiating ploy to steer clear of new sanctions in response to its nuclear test carried out two weeks ago.

Referring to the journalists as “young women” in public statements, administration officials said that they might have incidentally crossed the North Korean border and aked the North to return them to their families.

“Their detainment is not something that we’ve linked to other issues, and we hope the North Koreans don’t do that, either,” Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, told reporters.

The Obama administration, which has been working at the United Nations Security Council for a series of new sanctions to cut off funds to North Korea and interdict cargo, is now in a trouble over the sentencing of Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, who will serve in country’s famously brutal labor camps where stories of starvation, overwork and mistreatment are routine.

The officials are busy mulling over whether to send a special envoy in a high profile effort to seek the release of the two women. The two men being considered for the job are former Vice President Al Gore, whose Current TV channel employs the two journalists, and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who has visited North Korea a number of times and arranged the release of another American 15 years ago.

However, the White House declined to talk about that option, and Gore has largely kept quiet, perhaps in hopes of not hardening the North’s position. Richardson said it was too early for Obama to send a personal representative.

“Talk of an envoy is premature, because what first has to happen is a framework for negotiations on a potential humanitarian release,” Richardson said. “What we would try to seek would be some kind of a political pardon.”
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