Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will travel to North Korea for talks with leader Kim Jong Il on the release of family members of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang, the government announced yesterday, signaling a breakthrough in a stalemate that has soured Tokyo's relations with the impoverished communist state.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Koizumi would travel next Saturday. The talks will include discussion of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs and other bilateral issues and will be aimed at moving to normalize relations between the two counties, he said.
"The aim is to restore trust between Japan and North Korea," Hosoda said.
Speculation has been high in recent weeks that Koizumi could go to Pyongyang to secure the handover of the relatives -- seven children and one husband -- of five Japanese who were kidnapped by North Korea decades ago and sent back to Japan in 2002.
Hosoda said there was no guarantee that the relatives would be released when Koizumi goes to Pyongyang.
"This is up to the result of the visit and the negotiations," Hosoda said.
The issue is highly emotional in Japan, where repatriated abductees and their supporters have criticized the government for lack of progress in talks with North Korea. Such a trip, if successful, would be an important political coup for Koizumi, whose ruling coalition faces important elections in the upper house of Parliament in July.
Koizumi last traveled to North Korea for an unprecedented summit with Kim in September 2002.
It also follows high-profile moves by Tokyo to apply pressure on Pyongyang, including a recently enacted measure allowing unilateral sanctions against North Korea, in hopes of winning concessions on the abductions.
The families of the kidnapping victims said they had high expectations for Koizumi. Toru Hasuike, whose brother, Kaoru Hasuike, was abducted in the late 1970s and returned to Japan in 2002, called the reported trip "a brave decision."
North Korea has acknowledged kidnapping at least 13 Japanese citizens to train spies in Japanese language and customs.
Pyongyang said eight of them have since died, and it allowed the five survivors to return to Japan after a landmark September 2002 summit between Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Pyongyang, however, had so far refused to release the former abductees' family relatives, which include alleged US Army deserter Charles Robert Jenkins, who married one of the Japanese abductees and has stayed behind in North Korea with their two teenage daughters.
It was not immediately clear yesterday whether North Korea had already agreed to release the relatives as a prerequisite for Koizumi's visit, and it was not certain how many of them would be included in such a deal.
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