Posted on 11/14/2002 1:43:22 PM PST by knighthawk
TOKYO: North Korea on Thursday threatened to call off talks with Japan on security issues unless Tokyo returns to Pyongyang five Japanese who are visiting their homes decades after they were abducted to the communist state.
"Japan is creating a new obstacle to an improvement in relations between Japan and DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- North Korea) in violation of an inter-government agreement," a North Korean foreign minstry spokesman said.
The statement was carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) monitored here.
The five abductees, including two married couples and the wife of a US defector, are the only survivors among 13 Japanese whom Pyongyang has admitted kidnapping and taking to North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
In line with Tokyo's stance, they have publicly declared their refusal to return to the North a month after they made their first homecoming in a quarter of a century -- a visit which should have lasted about 10 days.
"If the Japanese side does not completely abide by the agreement on the return of the (five) members in question, it should be aware of the grave consequences arising therein, including an indefinite postponement of a conference on issues related to ensuring security," the statement said.
Japan and North Korea only resumed decade-old talks on normalising relations last month after they held a historic summit in Pyongyang in September when North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il acknowleged the abductions.
They had been put on hold for two years after Tokyo insisted on resolving the abduction issue as a precondition, while Pyongyang insisted on an apology and compensation for Japan's colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
At that time, the two sides agreed to start separate talks in November on security issues, which are presumed to include North Korea's development of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction.
How sure are that they don't already have some? If they do, they are probably gravity bombs delieverable by fighter type aircraft. Although the Japanese do have the capability to build ICBMs, let alone the MRBMs that would be needed to deal with N. Korea, should they choose to build them. They've even got a basic design, used as a space launch vehicle.
And if the Japanese had nukes, their public would go berserk about it. They still remember August 1945.
Another thing. The fallout would reach higher altitudes and fall on the US.
That is not a good thing.
China needs to help rein these guys in if they want to be in the community of nations.
My nightmare scenario is the NKPA moves a "dirty" nuke into Seoul and holds the country hostage. I don't think they are THAT crazy, but you never know.
Nobody's going to nuke North Korea. Winning wars aren't fought that way any more. The Japanese have a history of careful observation and extremely efficient employment of warfare tactics current in nations on top at the moment, from 1868 through 1905 through 1935 to the present. They are also our close confidantes and allies, and quite capable of employing the precision tactics we've been working out for the last 20 years. Especially when discreetly helped. Not that we would ever do any such thing...
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