LIMA : The White House said Friday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il likely had "some sort of health crisis" but declined to comment on his recovery amid persistent rumors about his condition.

"We don't know how to tell exactly what his condition is," Dennis Wilder, the top Asia hand on the US National Security Council, told reporters aboard US President George W. Bush's Air Force One airplane on the way to Peru.

"I think we continue to believe that it seems credible that he had some sort of health crisis, but as to his recovery from that health crisis, I'm just not in a position to speculate on that," Wilder said.

Wilder, asked whether there was any new information about Kim's health, replied: "There really isn't. North Korea is a very secretive place. We see the same photographs that you see. We really can't make much of them."

After he failed to attend a September 9 parade marking the country's 60th anniversary, South Korean and US officials said Kim had suffered a stroke around mid-August but was recovering well.

Last week the Tokyo Broadcasting System, citing an unnamed US intelligence source, reported that Kim, 66, suffered a second stroke in late October. South Korean officials could not confirm the report.

Kim's health is the subject of intense speculation because he has not publicly nominated a successor -- as his father had done more than 20 years before his death in 1994 -- to run the impoverished, nuclear-armed state.

North Korean state media have recently issued a series of still photos of Kim in public, in an apparent attempt to end the swirling speculation about his health. But they have all been undated, stoking even more rumors.

One of the photos, issued early this month, had been digitally altered to superimpose Kim's image onto a military group, experts said.

- AFP /ls