Japan said yesterday it would resume bilateral talks with North Korea after a gap of nine months as slow-moving efforts to end Pyongyang’s nuclear programs gather steam.
The talks, to be held today and tomorrow in Beijing, will be the first formal round of dialogue between the long-time adversaries since early September.
The negotiations, which aim to establish bilateral relations between Tokyo and the hardline communist state, were set up under a US-backed six-nation deal last year on disarming North Korea.
“The talks will be about the current situation between Japan and North Korea, and about how to deal with the future of bilateral relations,” Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura told reporters.
He quickly doused any expectations of a breakthrough.
“Nothing would be better than North Korea coming up with something new, but I don’t have great expectations,” Komura said.
Chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said separately: “As this is a preliminary meeting, I don’t know if we can have in-depth discussions.”
Akitaka Saiki, Japan’s chief envoy to the six-nation negotiations, will hold the talks with Song Il-ho, a senior North Korean diplomat handling relations with Tokyo, Japanese officials said.
The bilateral meeting comes amid small signs of hope in the stalled process for disarming the North. Six-way negotiations have not been held since the end of September.
US officials expect North Korea to submit soon a declaration of its nuclear programs required under the US-backed disarmament deal.
The declaration is more than six months overdue because of wrangling over alleged secret weapons programs and proliferation by Pyongyang.
“As the six-party negotiations are moving forward, the bilateral talks have to move forward as well,” said Masao Okonogi, a North Korea expert at Keio University.
He said this weekend’s talks could mark the start of a softening of Japanese policy toward North Korea.
“Japan may have to come up with a plan to ease its sanctions on North Korea because of expected progress in the six-way talks, which eventually may lead to a US decision to de-list Pyongyang as a state sponsor of terrorism,” he said.
Japan has urged the US to keep North Korea on its list of sponsors of terrorism. A de-listing would open the North to US aid and loans from international organizations.
Tokyo has slapped sweeping sanctions on Pyongyang since it tested a nuclear bomb in 2006, including a ban on all imports and ship calls.
North Korea, which fired a missile over Japan’s main island in 1998, is enemy No. 1 for many Japanese.
Japan has demanded that North Korea offer concessions in a row over Japanese civilians kidnapped by the communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.
Pyongyang, in turn, has pressed Tokyo for compensation over Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula.
The bilateral talks will be the first since the installation last year of Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who throughout his career has championed reconciliation with Asian neighbors, including North Korea.
The last round of bilateral talks took place in September in Mongolia. They yielded no breakthrough but marked a change in tone as the two sides spoke in a civil manner.
Japanese and North Korean officials also met informally in October in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in