Red Cross team leaves Japan for talks with N. Korea

0 Comments | Asian Political News, August 19, 2002

TOKYO, Aug. 15 Kyodo

A Japanese Red Cross Society delegation left Japan on Thursday evening for talks with its North Korean counterpart in Pyongyang on Sunday and Monday, a meeting marking the start of a series of contacts between the two countries this month.

The Japanese delegation, headed by the society's international relations department head Hiroshi Higashiura, will arrive in Pyongyang on Saturday via Beijing. Officials of the Japanese Foreign Ministry will join the delegation in the Chinese capital, they said.

Tokyo will tell Pyongyang, through the Red Cross and ensuing governmental talks, that it will take a hard line in urging a long-awaited settlement of allegations that Japanese nationals were abducted to North Korea.

Japan will tell North Korea it will not resume negotiations on normalizing bilateral ties unless the two sides reach new agreements to help settle the problem, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said earlier.

North Korea denies the abduction allegations, but in April said it would resume a search for what it calls ''missing people.''

Following the Red Cross talks, director general-level officials of the two countries' foreign ministries are due to meet Aug. 25 and 26, also in Pyongyang.

The series of bilateral talks comes as North Korea looks to boost dialogue with the outside world, apparently because of its serious economic slump and the hard line taken in policy toward North Korea by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.

But holding bilateral talks between ranking government officials does not signal that Japan intends to speed up efforts to resume normalization talks, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said earlier.

During the governmental talks, Japan will test the seriousness of North Korea's intentions on a range of issues, such as suspicions it is developing a nuclear arsenal and whether it is prepared to extradite Japanese nationals involved in a high-profile hijacking in 1970.

Hitoshi Tanaka, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, will represent Japan, while Ma Chol Su, director general for Asian affairs at North Korea's Foreign Ministry, will head the North Korean side.

Japan also plans to urge the North to step up cooperation and dialogue with South Korea and the United States over issues related to the security of East Asia, the officials said.

In the Red Cross talks, Japan will take up such issues as the search for the at least 11 Japanese it claims were abducted to North Korea in eight cases from 1977 to 1983.

The allegations have hindered the two states from resuming normalization talks, suspended since October 2000.

Ri Ho Rim, deputy secretary general of the North Korean Red Cross Society, is expected to head the North Korean delegation.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry officials who will join the Red Cross delegation plan to ask the North Korean side for an opportunity to meet North Koreans involved in the search for the missing Japanese nationals, Japanese diplomatic sources said.

The two Red Cross societies are also expected to discuss a search for Koreans who went missing before the end of World War II in 1945 at the request of Pyongyang.

They are also set to agree on a program to allow Japanese spouses of North Koreans to make a short visit to Japan, the diplomatic sources said.

A total of 43 Japanese spouses returned Japan under similar programs between September 1997 and September 2000.