Carter visits North Korea to win release of jailed American

• Former US president Jimmy Carter, 85, is greeted with flowers on his arrival at Pyongyang yesterday

The rare journey to win the release of 31-year-old Boston man Aijalon Gomes comes a year after another former US president, Bill Clinton, travelled to North Korea on a private mission to bring home two American journalists also sentenced to prison for sneaking into the country illegally. A fourth American was set free earlier this year after 40 days in custody.

As with Mr Clinton's visit, communist North Korea is expected to portray Mr Carter's trip — coming at a time of heightened tensions over its nuclear ambitions and the March sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on Pyongyang — as a diplomatic victory.

A young girl wearing a red scarf handed Mr Carter flowers and saluted him after he landed at the Pyongyang airport yesterday. Mr Carter blew her a kiss before getting into a black stretch Mercedes-Benz.

It was unclear whether Mr Carter's trip will include a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, but the statesman shared a warm handshake with the regime's second-in-command, Kim Yong-nam, before they sat down for talks yesterday. The talks were "cordial," the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.

North Korea has agreed to release Mr Gomes, who was believed to be in poor health, to Mr Carter if the former president paid a visit, a senior US official said. Mr Carter is to return to the United States with Mr Gomes today.

North Korea last year portrayed the Clinton trip as a diplomatic coup. Pyongyang's state media said Mr Clinton apologised on behalf of the journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and relayed US president Barack Obama's gratitude during a meeting with Kim Jong-il.

Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, and the US military has 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect it from the North.

Mr Carter has visited the communist nation before. The 85-year-old statesman made a historic trip to North Korea in 1994, when Mr Clinton was president, and met the then leader, Kim Il-sung, on a visit that led to a landmark disarmament deal on the Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

That deal fell apart in 2002 after the US accused North Korea of having a secret uranium enrichment programme. New disarmament talks were launched in 2003, but Pyongyang walked away from the process last year.

Mr Gomes, a teacher from Boston who had been working in South Korea, was sentenced in April to eight years of hard labour and fined the equivalent of 450,000 for crossing into the North illegally and committing an unspecified "hostile act."

It remains unclear why Mr Gomes crossed into North Korea. He is described by friends in Seoul as a devout Christian and by those who knew him at university in Maine as passionate and opinionated. He had joined rallies in Seoul in support of Robert Park, a fellow Christian who crossed into North Korea from China last December to call attention to the country's human rights record. Mr Park was expelled about 40 days later.

American officials have pressed for Mr Gomes' release on humanitarian grounds, citing his health and reports that he had attempted suicide while in custody.