Japan will discuss the fate of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea at nuclear disarmament talks this week but should not endanger the weapons negotiations by pushing the abduction issue too far, a Japanese official said Sunday.
"I think Japan will bring up this issue," Taku Yamasaki, former vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said on TV Asahi's < The fate of several Japanese kidnapped to North Korea decades ago has been a sticking point as the countries prepare for six-nation talks in Beijing aimed at eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang -- brought to the negotiating table through months of delicate diplomacy -- has objected to discussing anything outside the nuclear agenda and says the abduction issue has already been resolved. North Korea, which kidnapped the Japanese decades ago to use as language teachers for spies, said Wednesday it would not deal with Japan at all during the next round and blamed Tokyo for "trying to change the direction and atmosphere of the six-party talks." Yu Kameoka, a spokesman for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said afterward that Japan still intends to pursue the issue and "hear what North Korea thinks." Ahead of the nuclear talks, which resume tomorrow after a 13-month hiatus, Tokyo reportedly dispatched a diplomat to revive negotiations over the kidnappings. China has offered to provide a venue for bilateral talks between Japan and North Korea during the six-nation nuclear talks, Kyodo News agency reported. North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 80s. It allowed five of them to return to Japan, saying the other eight died. Japan is demanding proof of the deaths, as well as information on other cases of missing Japanese.
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
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
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS