SKorea's next president calls for Japan's active role in nuclear talks on NKorea

Feb 12,2008
AP

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea's next president called on Japan on Monday to play an active role in the international talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

President-elect Lee Myung-bak made the comments to a group of visiting Japanese lawmakers, according to Lee's office. Lee did not elaborate.

North Korea last year promised to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for the equivalent of 1 million tons of oil and political concessions under an aid-for-disarmament deal reached with the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.

In October, it pledged to disable its nuclear facilities and issue a declaration on its atomic programs by the end of 2007. The process stalled after North Korea said it provided the U.S. with a list in November, but the U.S. said it was incomplete.

Japan signed the disarmament deal but has since opted out of contributing, citing a lack of progress by North Korea in resolving the issue of abductions of its citizens by North Korea during the 1970s and '80s.

In 2002, North Korea admitted it kidnapped 13 Japanese nationals and allowed five to go home, claiming the other eight were dead. North Korea has since insisted the issue was resolved. Japan, however, believes some may still be alive and has demanded proof of their deaths.

Lee also renewed his stance that he would pursue a future-oriented relationship with Japan, which ruled the Korean peninsula 1910-45.

South Korea and Japan "should actively cooperate" with each other and demonstrate their cooperation by actions, Lee told Japanese lawmakers.

South Korea and Japan are key trade partners, but ties have often been frayed by Japanese leaders' repeated visits to a war shrine that critics say glorifies the country's wartime atrocities.

The two countries are also locked in a territorial dispute over a set of islets.

Lee has said he would not demand any apology from Japanese leaders for past colonial abuses. Lee is set to take office on Feb. 25.

U.S. rejects linking Japan abductees to North Korea deal

Feb 6, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States rejects formally linking the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea to diplomatic rewards for Pyongyang's pledged denuclearization, the U.S. nuclear envoy said on Wednesday.

But Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill told a U.S. Senate panel that ally Japan would not be left "in the lurch" or dealt any unpleasant surprises as Washington moves forward with a nuclear disarmament pact with Pyongyang.

The fate of at least 12 Japanese kidnapped by North Koreans decades ago is a highly emotive issue in Japan and a stumbling block that has kept Tokyo and Pyongyang from normalizing ties.

Japan worries that the United States will remove North Korea from its list of nations sponsoring terrorism before a resolution of the issue. Tokyo has urged Washington to postpone delisting North Korea until it comes clean on the abductees.

North Korea was added to that list in 1988 after one of its agents confessed to blowing up a South Korean passenger jet in late 1987. Pyongyang expects to be delisted for scrapping its nuclear arms programs under a regional disarmament pact.

"I don't think it's in our country's interest or Japan's interest or anyone's interest to make these hard linkages in advance," Hill told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But Hill said he assured Japan that "we will not have surprises between us and we will work in a way that we come out of this with our relationship strengthened."

Pyongyang admitted in 2002 that its agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, five of whom have since been repatriated to Japan.

North Korea says the other eight are dead, but Tokyo wants more information about their fate as well as information on another four people it says were kidnapped.

Hill told the Senate hearing that he raises the abductees in every meeting with North Koreans.

"I keep in my wallet a list of these people so that in the event that the North Koreans would mention a specific person I would have it right on hand," he said.

Although North Korea has yet to budge in the dispute, Hill said: "They have begun to accept that this is a fundamentally important issue for us and we are not going to leave our ally in the lurch or somehow forget about this problem."

(Reporting by Paul Eckert)

Japan Lawmakers Plan North Korea Talks With President-Elect Lee

By Hideko Takayama

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese lawmakers led by Koichi Kato, former secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will visit Seoul on Feb 10 and 11 for talks on North Korea with South Korea's president-elect Lee Myung Bak.

The 17-member delegation includes politicians from the biggest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan. The meeting between Lee and the delegation is scheduled for Feb. 11.

``I want to listen to Mr. Lee's policy towards North Korea,'' Kato said in a telephone interview. ``We also want to hear his views on economic policies and international finance.''

North Korea watchers in South Korea and Japan say Lee's policy toward the North is expected to be more business-like in contrast to outgoing President Roh Moo Hyun, who was criticized by conservatives of giving too much aid to Pyongyang as the country was developing a nuclear weapons program.

Kato and Taku Yamasaki, a former vice president of the LDP and another member of the delegation, met Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda last Friday to discuss the visit. Foreign policy should not reflect just one party's perspectives, but the country as a whole, Kato said he told the prime minister. Fukuda is expected to meet Lee after his inauguration on Feb 25.

Lee was born in Osaka, Japan, where his parents were working during the Japanese occupation of Korea, and grew up in Pohang in the southeastern region of South Korea. He became the chief executives of Hyundai Construction at the age of 36. Later he served as the mayor of Seoul.

Japan extended its economic sanctions against North Korea for six months in Oct. 2007, citing a lack of progress in resolving the abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s.

North Korea has admitted it kidnapped Japanese citizens, which defectors said were used as language instructors for North Korean spies. North Korea has returned five of the abductees and their relatives, and said they are the only survivors. Japan says 17 were abducted and is demanding a full account of their whereabouts and return.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hideko Takayama in Tokyo at htakayama10@bloomberg.net

Japan doubts NKorea will meet nuclear deadline: official

Wed Dec 26, 3:09 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan does not expect North Korea to meet a year-end deadline to declare its nuclear programmes but wants a full accounting once it does, an official said Wednesday.

The communist state was given until the end of 2007 to disable and declare all its nuclear programmes in the next stage of a six-nation aid-for-disarmament deal reached with Pyongyang earlier this year.
A senior Japanese foreign ministry official, who requested anonymity, said diplomats in Tokyo were not holding their breath.
"These are peaceful days for us," he told reporters.
"The year-end date isn't significant. What's important is a perfectly accurate declaration of whether North Korea has the will to abandon its nuclear programme," he said.
North Korea, which tested an atom bomb last year, has gone ahead with disablement of its plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor, the most visible symbol of its nuclear drive.
But the declaration has proved difficult, with South Korea indicating the obstacle was over whether Pyongyang was ready to disclose a suspected uranium enrichment programme.
China, North Korea's main ally and host of the six-nation talks, said Tuesday that Pyongyang was likely to miss the year-end deadline but stressed that the "majority" of the work would be finished.
Japan has been the most critical member of the six-nation talks, sometimes putting itself at odds with the United States, its main ally.
Japan has tense relations with North Korea in part due to the regime's kidnappings of Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.

Uranium traces found on North Korean tubes

Published: Friday, December 21, 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. scientists found traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing from North Korea, which appears to contradict its denials of a secret uranium-based nuclear program, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
U.S. officials were concerned that disclosing the finding of the uranium traces on tubing samples provided by North Korea would further complicate diplomacy with the secretive country, the Post said, citing U.S. and diplomatic sources.
While acknowledging its plutonium-based weapons program, North Korea has persistently denied U.S. allegations that it had engaged in inappropriate uranium-based activities.

Washington is trying to get North Korea to disclose details of all its nuclear programs, and Pyongyang has promised to make a declaration by December 31 as part of a wider deal to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits from the United States and others.
U.S. negotiators will be forced to demand a detailed explanation about use of the tubes from Pyongyang, which has maintained it acquired thousands of them for conventional uses, the Post said, citing unnamed sources.
Washington has said the tubes were evidence that North Korea had a clandestine uranium weapons program because they could be used as outer casings for centrifuges needed to process uranium gas into weapons fuel.
The State Department and a spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment on the uranium finding, the Post said.
While the tubes could have picked up uranium traces from an active enrichment program, the traces also could have come from exposure to other equipment or people exposed to both sets of equipment, the Post said, citing a former U.N. weapons inspector.
For example, the Post said, Pakistan has acknowledged providing North Korea with a sample centrifuge kit so the tubes could have picked up enriched uranium from Pakistani equipment.
(Written by World Desk, Americas; Editing by Roger Crabb)
© Reuters 2007