2024-05-05 10:28:18
The DPRK authorities “at the last moment” canceled planned visits of delegations from Great Britain, Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, who were going to check the possibility of resuming the work of their countries’ embassies in Pyongyang.
As Day.Az reports with reference to TASS, the NK News portal was informed about this by sources among diplomats and employees of non-governmental organizations.
Representatives from the foreign ministries of Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic were denied travel, several sources said. One NK News interlocutor mentioned Poland. During the visits, representatives of European countries planned to discuss the resumption of work of embassies that were closed due to the pandemic, study related problems, and also check the condition of buildings.
The Swiss Development and Cooperation Office was forced to postpone the trip of its delegation to the DPRK. “A group of Swiss technical specialists was planning to come to Pyongyang in May. The visit was postponed by the Korean side,” Swiss authorities told the portal. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that they plan to send a delegation this year and that both sides are looking for a suitable date. Warsaw previously indicated that the visit had been tentatively agreed upon for April.
The British and German Foreign Offices did not comment on the situation. Former British ambassador to Pyongyang John Everard suggested the change could be due to the position of the “people’s republic security agencies opposing” the return of Western diplomats.
At the same time, as the portal emphasizes, at the beginning of the year a new Cuban ambassador and diplomats from Mongolia arrived in Pyongyang. The rotation of personnel at the embassy was carried out by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. The People’s Republic is visited by tourists from Russia; on the eve of the Day of the Sun, representatives of Juche organizations from foreign countries came to the country. But “not a single Western embassy” has resumed work in Pyongyang, NK News points out.
At the end of February, four years after the start of the pandemic, delegations from Germany and Sweden arrived in the DPRK to inspect the property of the diplomatic missions and assess the prospects for return.
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