|
NKorea calls off Japan talks in Vietnam
2007-03-07
North Korea pulled out of afternoon talks with Japan aimed at normalising bilateral ties here Wednesday, without giving a reason or saying whether further meetings would be held. Diplomats from Tokyo and Pyongyang met in the morning for their first formal two-way talks in more than a year, following a landmark six-nation deal struck last month that aims to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. The delegations had been due to meet again at 3:00 pm (0800 GMT), but a North Korean embassy official in Hanoi said the meeting had been cancelled. "We cannot disclose the reason now," said the official who refused to give his name. "Maybe we will explain it later." He declined to say whether the North Korean side would meet the Japanese delegation again during the talks officially scheduled to last until Thursday. The foreign ministry in Japan said it assumed talks would resume Thursday, but it was unclear whether further talks would go ahead. Tokyo and Pyongyang had set out to discuss resolving a row over Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s. Pyongyang admitted in 2002 that it had abducted 13 Japanese citizens to train its spies in Japanese language and culture. It returned five of them and their families but insists the others are dead. Japan wants to see all abductees repatriated and has demanded a thorough investigation and extradition of the perpetrators. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has vowed he will not budge on the emotive issue. Tokyo has refused to fund the six-nation deal -- under which North Korea is set to receive 50,000 tonnes of fuel in return for closing a key nuclear facility and allowing in UN nuclear inspectors -- until the kidnapping issue has been resolved. In the February 13 deal, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States also assured North Korea of diplomatic and security guarantees if the regime completely abandons its nuclear programme. North Korea's move Wednesday left delegates scratching their heads. In Hanoi, a Foreign Ministry official said that North Korea had informed the Japanese delegation that the afternoon talks were suspended but could not confirm if the talks would go ahead. In Tokyo, Japanese foreign ministry deputy press secretary Tomohiko Taniguchi told AFP: "The meeting is suspended this afternoon. As far as why it has come to this, we would decline to disclose the reason. "Japan made our arguments about the abduction issue in the two and a half hours of the morning session. "We started the meeting with a plan to discuss kidnapping today and the normalisation of the relationships coupled with settlement of the historical issues to be taken up tomorrow. "So the schedule remains the same for tomorrow, as it is a separate track from today's topic." North Korea's main priority at the Hanoi talks has been for Japan to atone for its 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula. While North Korea did not spell out reasons for cancelling the meeting, Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers Party, lashed out at Japanese leaders' recent remarks on wartime sex slaves. Abe, who built his career campaigning on North Korea's abductions, has denied that Japan coerced thousands of so-called "comfort women," many of them Koreans, into the imperial army's brothels. "The Japanese reactionaries' despicable distortion of history is an intolerable insult to the Korean people, the victim," the Rodong Sinmun said, as quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency. "The Japanese reactionaries are increasing pressure upon the DPRK (North Korea), persistently raising a hue and cry over the already settled 'abduction issue,'" it said. "This is linked with their scheme of reinvasion of Korea." In their morning meeting Japan's top delegate Koichi Haraguchi and his North Korean counterpart Song Il-Ho shook hands but did not smile for the cameras.
| 
