South Korea wants tycoon to explain Saddam offer
South Korea's top diplomat in Hong Kong has sought a meeting with Stanley Ho Hung-sun to inquire about the Macau casino tycoon's comments last week that North Korea made an offer of asylum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
South Korean Consul-General Kang Keun-taik has contacted Mr Ho's office in Hong Kong requesting a meeting.
Mr Ho, who says he has nothing to add to last weekend's statements, is in Beijing at the National People's Congress.
Diplomats from North Korea's consulate in Hong Kong are also believed to have met Mr Ho to discuss his comments.
Neither the South Korean nor North Korean consulates would make any official comment on the gambling mogul's statements, which coincided with offers of exile for the Iraqi leader from Middle Eastern states.
Last weekend Mr Ho told the Sunday Morning Post that high-level North Korean officials had offered the Iraqi dictator and his family 11th-hour sanctuary at a mountain in the North.
It is not clear how much credence the South Korean government is giving to Mr Ho's statements, but a source has told the Post it wants to find out more.
'It seems far fetched but it's something they have to check out,' the source said.
Mr Ho - who has business interests in North Korea, including a casino - said unnamed senior officials had told him of the offer, which would give sanctuary in return for democratic elections in Iraq.
'We have to take any chance to have peace, especially if it comes in the shape of good news from the East,' Mr Ho said last weekend.
One of the conditions of the elections would be that none of the candidates would be allowed funding from the United States, ensuring there was no American interference in a future Iraqi democratic state, Mr Ho said. Anyone who did accept money from the US would be shot, he said.
Mr Ho gave no details on how such an offer would be facilitated or if it had been formally channelled to Baghdad.
Both North Korea and Iraq have been named by US President George W. Bush as forming part of an axis of evil.
North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, has been locked in a diplomatic wrangle with the US over North Korea's nuclear programme, as inspectors scour Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.
