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US man jailed in N. Korea phones home

BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 30, 2010 AFP - An American jailed in North Korea was allowed Friday to call home for the first time since being sentenced to eight years’ hard labor, as the United States urged his release.Thaleia Schlesinger, a spokeswoman for Aijalon Mahli Gomes’ family in his hometown of Boston, told AFP that Gomes spoke with his mother.“Yes, she did receive a phone call from her son in North Korea. She was really quite surprised and relieved,” Schlesinger said.

“She is grateful to the government for allowing him to call. She has no other comment but to say she was thankful to hear his voice.”

The 30-year-old from Boston was jailed by North Korea on April 6 and fined 70 million won (equivalent to about 700,000 dollars at the official exchange rate) for illegal border crossing.Gomes’ mother did no reveal more about the conversation, Schlesinger said, “but she did say she is praying for him and for his safe return.”Pyongyang said it had allowed Gomes to make the call.

“US citizen Aijalon Mahli Gomes... asked for a phone contact with his family for his health and other reasons,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

“The relevant organ of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, taking his request into consideration, permitted him to do so on Friday.”The United States welcomed the “gesture” by North Korea to allow Gomes to phone his family, but urged Pyongyang to free him from jail.“It’s a gesture,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters. “But we want to see him released on humanitarian grounds.”Gomes, a former English teacher in South Korea and reportedly a devout Christian, was arrested in January the fourth US citizen in less than a year to be detained for illegal entry.

KCNA said he had “admitted all the facts” at his trial.

The United States has requested an amnesty for him, working through the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which represents US interests in the country.

The hardline communist North pardoned and deported three previous offenders. Analysts have said Gomes may also be freed after Pyongyang uses him as a bargaining chip in its nuclear standoff with Washington. The United States and other members of a six-nation nuclear disarmament forum are pressing the North to return to talks which it quit a year ago.Pyongyang wants Washington’s commitment to discuss a formal peace treaty before it returns to the six-party talks.

It says it developed its nuclear arsenal in response to US threats and needs a peace pact before it can consider giving up the weapons.The United States says other matters should wait until after the North rejoins the talks and shows it is serious about denuclearisation.Gomes crossed the border from China on January 25, according to reports from Pyongyang.

A Seoul activist, Jo Sung-Rae, said in March that the American had taken part in anti-Pyongyang rallies in South Korea and was moved to tears by accounts of rights abuses in the North.Gomes crossed one month after US missionary Robert Park walked into the country across a frozen border river from China on Christmas Day, calling on leader Kim Jong-Il to quit because of rights abuses.

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