Japan and North Korea ended five days of talks in Beijing on Wednesday unable to make progress on normalising relations, with sharp differences remaining over kidnappings, security and wartime history.
”Through these talks we got to know each other more clearly. However as we got to know each other more, we also found that the differences between the two are big,” chief North Korean negotiator Song Il-Ho told reporters.
While several key issues were on the agenda, Japan insisted throughout the talks that no progress would be made unless the issue of North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s was addressed.
However the North Koreans did not budge from their position put forward in 2002, when they said they had resolved the issue after repatriating five kidnap victims.
”There is no change to our position in the abduction issue,” Song said, as he blamed the Japanese for the stalemate.
”We cannot help wondering if they intend to resolve the issue or create a situation of confrontation.”
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo that Japan would look at ways to step up pressure on North Korea over the matter.
”We have no intention to terminate communication but will discuss what means of new pressure should be employed,” Abe said.
He did not specify what measures would be considered but Japanese leaders have previously called for economic sanctions.
Japan’s chief negotiator at the Beijing talks, Koichi Haraguchi, warned on Wednesday that calls in Japan to slap economic sanctions on North Korea over the abduction issue were now likely to grow.
Tokyo maintains at least eight Japanese nationals — kidnapped to train North Korean spies — may still be alive in the Stalinist state and are being kept hidden because they know too many secrets about the regime.
Pyongyang raised counter-allegations of kidnappings during the talks, claiming its nationals who had disappeared along the North Korean and Chinese border in the past were believed to have been abducted by Japan.
Intensifying the standoff, North Korea also demanded the handover of humanitarian workers in Japan who had supported North Korean defectors.
”That is out of the question,” Abe said, while Japanese groups named by the North Koreans voiced outrage.
Seeking redress for Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945 remained the top priority for the North Koreans at the talks.
Security was the other main issue on the agenda, but negotiators also failed to make any headway on that subject with a full day of talks scheduled for Tuesday cut back to just a morning session.
On the security front, Japan failed to win any commitment from North Korea to return to the long-running six-party nuclear negotiations, which have been stalled since November last year.
Japan, along with host China, South Korea, the United States and Russia, are involved in the six-party talks with North Korea, which are aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programme in return for energy and other aid.
North Korea has said it will not return to the talks until Washington lifts economic sanctions on financial institutions linked to North Korea’s alleged illegal activities, including counterfeiting and money laundering.
In a slightly bizarre twist, North Korea called on Japan to help convince the United States to lift the sanctions.
”Japan and the United States are friends. If Japan asks, the United States might listen,” Song said. ”The United States will not listen from us.”
No date was set for a next round of talks between North Korea and Japan, although both sides said the channels of communication would remain open. – AFP
