By KANAKO TAKAHARA
Staff writer
Japan and the United States agreed Saturday that the two governments should hold a trilateral meeting with South Korea "at the earliest date" to discuss how to deal with the North Korean nuclear crisis, Japanese officials said.
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| James Kelly, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia affairs, arrives at Narita airport Saturday for talks with Japanese officials over North Korea. |
The meeting may take the form of a session of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group, a sub-Cabinet level meeting of the three countries, the officials said.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly stopped in Japan on his way back to the U.S. on Saturday. He provided Japanese government officials with details of a three-day meeting that ended Friday in Beijing among the U.S., North Korea and China to discuss the nuclear standoff.
In the Tokyo meeting, which included Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda and Foreign Ministry officials, Kelly said he had emphasized during the trilateral talks the importance of including Japan and South Korea in the discussions at an early date.
North Korea, however, did not give any specific reaction to his request.
When Kelly spoke of North Korea's human rights violations, he also mentioned the abduction by Pyongyang of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, the officials said. Japan had urged the U.S. to take up the issue in the meeting.
"The abductions is a very important issue for neighboring nations," Kelly, who heads East Asian and Pacific affairs, was quoted by ministry officials as saying. North Korea made no response, they said.
Although North Korea made a "generous proposal" to resolve the crisis, analysis should be conducted before reaching any decision, the official was quoted as saying. Government officials refused to give details of the proposal.
Kelly admitted that North Korean negotiator Li Gun made remarks concerning nuclear weapons, adding that the U.S. needs to analyze the remarks, officials said.
Media reports quoted U.S. officials as saying Pyongyang claimed it possesses nuclear weapons and has reprocessed all 8,000 spend nuclear fuel rods in its possession.
A Foreign Ministry official who attended Saturday's meeting said it is too early to say that the level of the nuclear crisis has increased, hinting that Li's remark did not include anything that would require immediate attention.
Japan said it is willing to cooperate with the U.S. and South Korea to seek a peaceful resolution, a senior government source said.
Japan and the U.S. agreed on the necessity of remaining in close contact, and with South Korea, and urging North Korea to take steps as a "responsible member of the international community," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. also demanded a verifiable and irreversible method for dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program, officials said.
The Japan Times: April 27, 2003