Japan will offer energy assistance to North Korea at next week's six-way talks over the North's atomic ambitions, but only if the communist state freezes its nuclear programs, Japanese media said yesterday.
Tokyo, which had stopped short of making such an offer in previous discussions, has decided to do so out of concern that if no progress were made at the upcoming round, the momentum for the talks would be lost, the reports said.
Beijing is hosting the third round of six-way talks from Wednesday until Saturday involving both Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US.
"If there are no results at the third round, then the meaning of the six-way talks will be questioned," a senior Japanese foreign ministry official was quoted as saying by the Mainichi Shimbun daily. "We are preparing an environment in which North Korea can more easily make concessions."
At the last round of talks, South Korea, China and Russia offered energy aid in return for the North's proposal to freeze its nuclear activities. But Japan and the US only expressed "understanding" for Pyongyang's proposition.
The change in Japan's position follows last month's summit in the North Korean capital between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
According to Koizumi, Kim had offered to freeze his country's nuclear activities accompanied by verification.
Japanese media said Tokyo would only offer aid in line with Washington's policy that any freezing of the North's programs must be a first step towards dismantling its plutonium and suspected uranium enrichment projects.
A senior US official said this week Washington was open to Pyongyang freezing its nuclear activities and to others rewarding it for this step, but only if the North agreed to complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of its programs.
The North has said such a precondition was unacceptable.
Efforts by North Korea towards resolving the issue of Japanese abducted by its agents in the past would also be a condition for Japanese assistance, media reports said.
North Korea's delegation to working level six-party talks arrived in Beijing yesterday and the other delegations were due later in the weekend, China's Xinhua news agency reported.
The working level talks, set for tomorrow and Tuesday, would lay a foundation for the senior-level discussions, which open behind closed doors on Wednesday at the exclusive Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing.
The past two rounds of six-way talks, held last August and in February this year, have failed to make much progress because of the gap between the key protagonists, North Korea and Washington.
The crisis over the North's nuclear arms programs erupted in October 2002, when US officials said North Korea had disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons, in violation of an international agreement.
Pyongyang has since denied it has a uranium enrichment program, but early last year threw out UN nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted a mothballed nuclear reactor from which weapons-grade plutonium can be extracted.
China has called for "reasonable expectations" on the complex issues at the latest round of talks, while Russia warned not to expect a breakthrough.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS