TOKYO: Japan yesterday kept alive the threat of sanctions to press North Korea over its kidnapping of Japanese as the countries prepared to resume rapprochement talks after a one-year break.
On the eve of the subcabinet-level talks in Beijing there was no sign the North would budge, even though normalisation of ties with its rich neighbour would bring massive economic aid to the impoverished, heavily armed state.
“If there is no sincere response from North Korea in solving the abduction issue, we must think about many things,” said Shinzo Abe, a reputed hawk against Pyongyang, who was appointed chief cabinet secretary in a ministerial reshuffle two days ago.
He was referring to calls from families of abduction victims for economic sanctions to force North Korea to come clean on its abductions of Japanese civilians up until the 1980s to train its spies.
“I want North Korea to give a serious response,” Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said. But Koizumi, who was re-elected in September in a landslide, has resisted calls from Abe and other politicians for sanctions.
Koizumi has invested political capital in engaging the North and has said he wants to establish diplomatic relations by the time he leaves office in September 2006.
The North broke off a full government-level dialogue with Tokyo last December when Japan accused it of lying by providing the wrong person’s ashes to prove the death of a kidnap victim.
The two countries agreed to reopen the dialogue in September when they attended the last round of six-nation talks in Beijing on dismantling the North’s nuclear arms programme.
The North agreed in a joint statement by the six nations — which also include China, Russia, South Korea and the United States — to end its nuclear weapons programmes in exchange for security guarantees, economic help and diplomatic recognition.
The latest Japan-North Korea bilateral will take place before the next round of six-party talks, expected to be held in the Chinese capital next week.
“We will again emphasise that without a solution to the abduction issue, there will be no normalisation of diplomatic ties,” Akitaka Saiki, the chief Japanese delegate to the talks, told reporters on his arrival in Beijing. “We will strongly prod North Korea to act seriously and promptly.”
In a landmark visit to Pyongyang in 2002, Koizumi agreed with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to normalise relations by solving bilateral issues and removing security concerns.
At the time Japan pledged to extend economic aid to North Korea after they establish diplomatic ties to atone for its colonial rule of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945. Japan gave $500mn in grants and loans to South Korea when they normalised ties in 1965. At the 2002 summit North Korea admitted kidnapping Japanese citizens.
It declared the issue settled after repatriating five kidnap victims along with their families following the first Koizumi-Kim summit and the second in 2004.
It claimed that other abductees were dead. Japan has insisted the others — at least eight — are still alive and kept under wraps because they know too many secrets.
“As South Korea and China have been offering help, North Korea can do without economic aid from Japan for a few years. But it must turn to Japan in the long run as that’s what China wishes,” said Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura.-AFP |
