North Korea's leader, Mr Kim Jong-il, was snubbed by a Russian regional governor when his trans-Siberian train stopped at the far eastern city of Khabarovsk in the early hours of yesterday, officials said.
Mr Kim, who is making a marathon 10-day rail journey through Russia's sprawling territory for a summit meeting in Moscow with President Putin in early August, arrived at the city at 1.50 a.m. But the local governor, Mr Viktor Ishayev, without explanation failed to turn up to greet the head of state, according to a senior aide to Mr Putin's representative in the Russian Far East who is accompanying Mr Kim.
During the half-hour stop, the North Korean leader instead met a welcoming committee of railway and local officials.
Scores of North Koreans resident in Khabarovsk had gathered for the occasion dressed in festive white, hoping to greet their leader, joined by a mass of local television reporters as well as crews from US and Japanese television.
But Mr Kim, whose train was surrounded on the platform by elite Russian OMON interior troops, did not speak either to his fellow Koreans or to the reporters.
The reclusive 59-year-old leader, who is making his first official visit to any country other than China, is travelling with a retinue of over 100 people including doctors and cooks in his 21-carriage armoured train, made in Japan.
Mr Kim's train will arrive today in Ulan Ude, capital of the mainly Buddhist republic of Buryatia, where he will receive a traditional greeting from its ethnic Mongol inhabitants.