Int'l Kim Jong Il Prize Awarded to Equatorial Guinean President

  Pyongyang, August 7 (KCNA) -- An event was held at the Presidential Palace on Monday with splendor to award the International

Kim Jong Il Prize to the president of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
    Present there were President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the second vice prime minister in charge of Society and Human Rights, Alejandro Evuna Owono, minister of state for Envoys of the Presidential Office, and other high-ranking officials, media persons and Johnny Hon, director of the International Kim Jong Il Prize Council, and his party.
    Also present there were the DPRK party and government delegation headed by Kim Ki Nam, member of the Political Bureau and secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, the DPRK ambassador to Equatorial Guinea and staff members of his embassy.
    Johnny Hon read out the decision of the council on awarding the International Kim Jong Il Prize to Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and contents of diploma and presented the diploma, cup and gold medal to him.
    Johnny Hon and Kim Ki Nam made congratulatory speeches. Then followed a reply speech of the Equatorial Guinean president.
    The president said that he was grateful for the DPRK's dispatching its party and government delegation to congratulate him on receiving the prize. He expressed deep thanks once again to the Korean people for extending support and solidarity to the Equatorial Guinean people in the past.
    He was convinced that the friendly relations between the two countries would grow stronger. -