Speculation simmered yesterday over a possible trip by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korea to resolve a feud over kidnapped Japanese, but officials said more groundwork was needed before any visit could be made.
A breakthrough in the dispute over the abductees, an emotive topic in Japan, would clear the way for talks on establishing diplomatic ties between the two countries and would be a political coup for Koizumi ahead of a July Upper House election.
"A visit by the prime minister is our best card. I hope any decision on it will be made carefully," said ruling Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Shinzo Abe.
"It's important that there's a clear outlook that the abduction issue will be solved," he told a news conference.
Koizumi's popularity ratings shot up after he met Kim Jong-il in September 2002, when the North Korean leader admitted to the kidnapping of 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies.
Five of those abductees came home to Japan, a quarter century after being snatched away. But they had to leave behind their North Korean-born children -- now teenagers and adults -- and one American spouse. Pyongyang has said the other eight had died from illness, accidents or suicide.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiro-yuki Hosoda told a separate news conference that several issues needed to be sorted out before Koi-zumi could travel to Pyongyang to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in what would be the second summit between the two.
"Please think of it as a completely clean slate," Hosoda told reporters when asked about reports that North Korea had proposed a Koizumi visit at last week's bilateral talks.
Koizumi was also coy. "Media reports seem to be saying various things but there is nothing I can say at this point," Kyodo news agency quoted him as telling reporters.
On Sunday, the Nihon Keizai business newspaper said the premier had told Foreign Ministry officials to start preparations for a possible trip to Pyongyang.
The Nihon Keizai said Koizumi could make a visit once Pyongyang promised that family members of Japanese abductees who are still in the North could be reunited with relatives in Japan.
In return, Tokyo would provide humanitarian aid for the North's struggling economy, the paper added.
Top spokesman Hosoda noted, however, that besides bilateral issues, the thorny matter of North Korea's nuclear programme had yet to be solved.
Delegates from the two Ko-reas, China, Japan, Russia and the US are to meet in Beijing tomorrow for working level talks on the nuclear standoff. Two-way talks between North Korean and Japanese officials could take place on the sidelines.
Families of the returned abductees want Koizumi to make the trip and bring their relatives home, but those whose loved ones are said to be dead or missing worry that this might close the door to finding out the truth about their fates, Japanese media said.
Besides the seven North Korean-born children, Japan also wants the husband of one abductee, Charles Jenkins, a US soldier said by Washington to have defected to the North, to be allowed to join his wife in Japan.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS