Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s dictator, made the rare step of personally greeting Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, at Pyongyang airport on Sunday, offering a sign that a fresh diplomatic initiative on nuclear disarmament talks could be imminent.

Other delegations this year have not received such a warm welcome. A suggestion from Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, that Pyongyang return to six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear warheads was immediately snubbed on his visit in April.