North Korea said yesterday it won't deal with Japan at revived nuclear disarmament talks next week, criticizing Tokyo's plan to bring up the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents decades ago.
The comment came after South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said that negotiating partners should focus on resolving the international standoff over the North's nuclear program and refrain from adding other issues to the nuclear talks set to resume on Tuesday in Beijing after a 13-month hiatus.
The goal of the negotiations is "denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and dismantling the North's nuclear weapons program," Chung said in an interview in yesterday's Hankyoreh newspaper. "Issues of North Korea's human rights and Japanese abductions ... should not be on the agenda."
Japanese officials have said they want to meet with North Korean delegates to discuss the abductions on the sidelines of the talks, which also include the US, South Korea, China and Russia.
Yesterday, North Korea criticized Japan's intentions.
"The negative role played by Japan at the previous rounds of the talks compels [North Korea] not to deal with Japan even if the talks are resumed," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a commentary.
"Japan has so far stood in the way" of the disarmament negotiations, KCNA said. "Japan has busied itself to divert the orientation and atmosphere for the six-party talks into those serving its mean interests."
The official news agency said "Japan will find nothing to do" at the nuclear talks and its participation "would only create more complexities to the talks."
North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, and allowed five of them to return to Japan, saying the other eight have died. Japan, however, is demanding proof of the deaths and information on other cases of missing Japanese.
China, meanwhile, expressed hope yesterday for progress at the nuclear negotiations.
"I'm pretty sure that all the parties ... will demonstrate good spirit of mutual understanding, mutual respect and work together for the success of the talks," Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (
The North Korean nuclear crisis began in late 2002, when US officials accused the North of running a secret uranium enrichment program. In February, the North claimed it had nuclear weapons and has since taken steps to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS