North Korean leader Kim Jong-un meets first foreign leader in over 2 years

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has held talks with Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, official media reported Tuesday, marking Kim’s first meeting with a senior foreign leader in more than two years as he has yet to travel overseas since taking power in late 2011.

Kim said the visit by a Cuban delegation headed by Diaz-Canel is of “weighty significance in instilling the history and tradition of the friendship” between the two countries “into the rising generation,” during the meeting in Pyongyang on Monday, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Diaz-Canel is the highest ranked official from overseas that Kim has held talks with since he met with Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao in July 2013 in Pyongyang.

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between North Korea and Cuba.

The latest meeting shows North Korea’s continued close ties with Cuba, which restored full diplomatic relations with the United States in July after being severed for more than five decades.

KCNA quoted the Cuban vice president as saying that the Caribbean island nation and the East Asian country are “far away from each other geographically but they are firmly united with common ideology and friendship” and their citizens are “comrades-in-arms standing together in the forefront for independence against imperialism.”