North Korea is holding secret talks with Japan in China in what is believed to be their first contact since the death of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Japanese media reported, as nuclear envoys from South Korea and China met in Beijing yesterday.
Amid a series of diplomatic contacts, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met China’s leadership in Beijing to discuss ways to preserve peace and stability on the divided peninsula as the North undergoes a delicate transition of power.
Hiroshi Nakai, a former Japanese state minister, met the North’s delegation on Monday for talks on the abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, Japan’s Kyodo news agency quoted sources as saying.
The sides are also believed to have discussed terms for restarting intergovernmental negotiations, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.
Nakai’s office confirmed his trip to China. A government official declined to comment on the trip.
The meeting in China was scheduled to last through yesterday, but it could be shortened or extended depending on the North’s response, media reports said.
The Japanese government regards North Korea’s participation as a sign the North’s new leadership “may be interested in improving relations with Japan through progress in the abduction issue,” which keeps the two countries from normalizing diplomatic relations, one source said.
Japan and North Korea have not held intergovernmental talks since August 2008.
Separately, the South’s foreign ministry said a meeting was under way yesterday between the nuclear envoys from China and South Korea to discuss denuclearizing the North. The talks were held on the sidelines of Lee’s state visit.
Since Kim’s death last month, Beijing has called on regional powers to press ahead with efforts to restart aid-for-disarmament talks with Pyongyang.
On Monday, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) told Lee that the peninsula’s stability was paramount and nudged his counterpart to improve ties with the North.
Six-party talks involving the two Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia stalled about two years ago, but late last year efforts to get Pyongyang back to the negotiating table had appeared to be gaining momentum.
Just before Kim’s death last month, officials from the North and the US had held a positive round of talks in Beijing.
Media reports said at the time Pyongyang was poised to announce an agreement with Washington to suspend its uranium enrichment program and accept UN nuclear monitors in exchange for food aid.
Such moves by North Korea, which has twice tested nuclear devices, were preconditions set by South Korea and the US for resuming the six-party talks, which offer the North aid and diplomatic contacts in return for disabling its nuclear weapons program.
South Korea has said it is willing to hold more talks with the North to try to restart the six-party process.
Analysts say the impoverished North may seek to reach out for more talks in the hope of winning aid as the new leadership consolidates power, but doubt they will consider giving up its nuclear weapons program.
The state’s young and untested “great successor,” Kim Jong-un, appears to have made burnishing a hardline image his top priority as he seeks to win the backing of the powerful military, analysts say.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS