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.
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