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Japan faces isolation over North Korea
2007-02-14
Japan is faced with hard choices on North Korea with its hardline stance leaving it the odd man out after a compromise deal on the communist state's nuclear programme. Japan has ruled out any funding for the agreement, reached Tuesday in six-nation talks that included Tokyo, until it resolves a row with North Korea over its past kidnappings of Japanese civilians. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who built his career campaigning on the emotionally charged abduction dispute, told parliament Wednesday that the issue "is our top priority." But Japan is increasingly alone. Its chief ally, the United States, has compromised with the state which US President George W. Bush once derided as part of an "axis of evil." "The deal seems to be the result of a change in US policy to stress dialogue instead of pressure on North Korea, which means Japan is isolated in the six-party talks," said Masafumi Iida, a researcher at Japan's National Institute For Defence Studies. "Given that the United States is stuck in turmoil over Iraq and the Iranian nuclear issue, and its domestic politics are increasingly influenced by Democrats critical of President Bush's tough line against North Korea, Japan is now the only nation to maintain a hard line against Pyongyang," he said. Japan sees itself as the chief target of North Korea, which fired a missile over its main island in 1998. In 2002, North Korea admitted kidnapping Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies. It allowed five victims and their families to return to Japan. But Japan says more abductees -- the most famous being Megumi Yokota, who was snatched in 1977 when she was only 13 -- are alive and kept under wraps. Abe was an early advocate for the kidnap victims' families. He enjoyed high popularity after slapping sweeping sanctions on North Korea in response to its October nuclear test, which took place days into his premiership. But Abe's poll ratings have since slipped due to domestic scandals, and his uncompromising stance on North Korea has not been without criticism. Taku Yamasaki, a ruling-party lawmaker close to Abe's predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, who paid two landmark visits to Pyongyang, said Japan should chip in for the nuclear deal, even if the abduction issue is unresolved. "I don't buy the view that the denuclearisation of Korean Peninsula should be left up to other countries," said Yamasaki, who himself visited North Korea last month. "It is Japan that will be the chief beneficiary of denuclearisation," he told reporters. Masao Okonogi, a North Korea expert at Tokyo's Keio University, said Abe is too identified with his hawkish stance to ease it now, especially ahead of July's upper house elections seen as uncertain for the ruling party. But Okonogi predicted that Japan may eventually be forced to adapt to new realities. Despite the Bush administration's insistence on six-way talks, the United States and North Korea have increasingly been hashing out differences in bilateral meetings. Abe's government also has cooler ties with the US than did Koizumi, who was one of Bush's closest allies. Two of Abe's top cabinet ministers have recently offered unusually blunt critiques of US policy on Iraq. US Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to visit Japan next week amid the bilateral strains. "The move towards direct talks between Pyongyang and Washington during the latest negotiations on the North Korean nuclear issue could mean that things will happen more quickly than now expected," Okonogi said. "And if the denuclearisation process proceeds rapidly, it would result in a diplomatic pitfall for the Abe administration -- isolation from the international framework."
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