Carter arrives in Seoul from Pyongyang

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and three former European leaders arrived in Seoul Thursday after wrapping up a trip to North Korea, officials said.

The "Elders" delegation landed at Seoul Airport, a military facility south of Seoul, on a chartered plane at 2:10 p.m., said the officials, noting the former state leaders were to brief South Korean officials about their trip that included meetings with North Korea's No. 2 leader Kim Yong-nam and Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun.

There was no word yet whether they held talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his heir-apparent son Kim Jong-un.

The rare trip by the former leaders came amid diplomatic efforts to resume stalled international talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs.

North Korea has expressed its interest in returning to the talks it quit in 2009, but its refusal to take responsibility for its two deadly attacks on the South has hindered diplomatic efforts to revive the talks that include the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

Carter said that North Korea wants to have an unconditional dialogue with South Korea and the United States on denuclearization or any other subject, but will not abandon its nuclear weapons without a security guarantee.

"We are hearing consistently throughout our busy schedule here in Pyongyang that the North wants to improve relations with America and is prepared to talk without preconditions to both the U.S. and South Korea on any subject," Carter said Wednesday in a message posted on the Web site of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders to promote global peace and humanity.

"The sticking point, and it's a big one, is that they won't give up their nuclear program without some kind of security guarantee from the U.S.," he said.

Meanwhile, a group of U.S. human rights activists, including Suzanne Scholte, head of the U.S. non-governmental Defense Forum Foundation, criticized Carter's trip to Pyongyang as appeasing a dictator who has killed millions of North Koreans.

"As Americans we know that Carter's policies as president of our country prolonged the Cold War with his appeasement of the Soviet Union," the activists said in a statement.

"We are ashamed to see a former American president who claims to care about human rights, now attempting to prolong the Korean War by serving as a mouthpiece for the Kim Jong-il regime."

The activists are in Seoul to attend a series of events highlighting North Korea's dismal human rights record. (Yonhap)