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Koizumi visits Pyongyang to `break nuclear stalemate'

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will visit North Korea this weekend in a bid to bring back eight relatives of kidnapped Japanese citizens and break a stalemate over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

The one-day trip today will be Koizumi's second meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il following their historic summit in September 2002 which resulted in the return of five Japanese kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s.

On Thursday, the prime minister said in his weekly e-mail magazine column he intended to make progress on both the abduction issue and stalled six-nation discussions on Pyongyang's nuclear arms ambitions.

"Talking face-to-face once more with Chairman Kim is the only way that we can expect to see any advance in the situation as it currently stands," Koizumi wrote.

The row over North Korea's nuclear program has been deadlocked since October 2002, when Washington said the Stalinist state had broken a 1994 nuclear freeze by launching a secret weapons drive.

The eight relatives are seven children of three couples and a former US soldier, listed as a deserter, who is married to a Japanese abductee brought back to Japan with two other kidnapped couples in October 2002.

"We must find a way for the family members to return to Japan without any further delay," Koizumi said in the e-mail magazine.

Efforts to normalize relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang stalled following a backlash from the Japanese public to North Korea's admission at the 2002 summit that it kidnapped 13 Japanese during the Cold War era, eight of whom it said had died.

In return for a breakthrough, Koizumi is reportedly ready to offer some 250,000 tonnes of rice as food aid to the impoverished state and to promise to refrain from imposing economic sanctions.

The conservative Sankei Shimbun said Wednesday Japan was also prepared to give Pyongyang US$10 million worth of medical supplies through an international organisation "if there is progress over the abduction issue."

The five former abductees who were repatriated in 2002 came to Tokyo yesterday in anticipation that their loved ones might actually be allowed to return home with Koizumi.

"I strongly believe that the eight family members of the five will come to Japan tomorrow with Prime Minister Koizumi," one of the five, Kaoru Hasuike, 46, said at a televised press conference.

"All I do is believe and pray," said Hitomi Soga, 45, whose American husband, Charles Robert Jenkins, and two daughters are still here.

Her situation is particularly complicated because Jenkins, 64, is listed as having deserted from the US Army in 1965 and Tokyo is worried Washington could demand his handover for prosecution.

Tokyo also wants Pyongyang to account for other Japanese it believes were abducted whose whereabouts remain unknown.
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