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NUKEWARS
N. Korea moving 'further away' from denuclearisation: US envoy
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Sept 29, 2014


Japan, N. Korea meet over Cold War kidnappings
Tokyo (AFP) Sept 29, 2014 - Japan on Monday demanded North Korea promptly report the results of its probe into the Cold War kidnappings of Japanese citizens, as the two nations began talks in northeast China.

The meeting of senior officials in the city of Shenyang came after Tokyo announced in July it was easing sanctions against Pyongyang, following the secretive state's promise to reinvestigate the cases of Japanese abductees.

Japan believes dozens of people were snatched in the 1970s and 1980s to train the North's spies in the Japanese language and customs.

Japanese officials had expected the report by September, but North Korea recently said it would be unable to supply substantial details to that timeline.

"We believe North Korea should promptly conduct a comprehensive, all-out investigation into abduction victims and all other Japanese nationals and quickly report the results," Junichi Ihara, the head of Japan's delegation, said at the start of the one-day talks, television footage showed.

His North Korean counterpart Song Il-Ho said the meeting was not meant to report investigation results but to review what activity both sides have been involved in since July and clarify their current stances.

North Korea admitted in 2002 that it had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens to train its spies.

Five of the abductees returned home but Pyongyang said -- without producing credible evidence -- that the eight others had died.

That claim provoked an uproar in Japan, where there are suspicions that dozens or perhaps even hundreds of others were taken.

Tokyo and Pyongyang have no formal diplomatic ties, partially because of what Japan says is the North's unwillingness to come clean over the abductions.

Glyn Davies, US special representative on North Korea policy, voiced support for Japan's effort to get back abductees while stressing the need to keep the dialogue transparent in a bid to maintain pressure on Pyongyang to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.

"We very much support the efforts of the government in Japan to seek to resolve this humanitarian issue," Davies told reporters in Beijing.

"And we of course take your assurance -- the Japanese assurance -- that they will carry forward this work in an open and transparent manner with us," the envoy said.

"That I think is what's important, because we all have to work together to try to move North Korea in the right direction," he added.

The US diplomat in charge of North Korea policy said Monday a speech by its foreign minister at the United Nations shows the country is moving further away from a return to six-country nuclear talks.

Glyn Davies, the special representative for North Korea policy, spoke with reporters in Beijing as he began a nearly week-long trip that will also take him to Seoul and Tokyo.

He cited "troubling further signs" that North Korea "is even more directly rejecting its responsibilities to live up to its obligation to denuclearise.

"We saw this again in a speech given by the foreign minister at the UN General Assembly in New York."

"It is essential that North Korea begin to take steps that move in that direction," he told reporters. "Instead, they're moving further and further away from that requirement."

In the first UN address by a top Pyongyang official in 15 years, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong -- in a speech to the General Assembly on Saturday -- defended his country's nuclear weapons programme, which he said was necessary due to the "hostile policy" of the US.

The day Ri spoke, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a speech at the assembly called for a resumption of talks on the North's programme as soon as possible.

China -- along with Russia, the US, North Korea, South Korea and Japan -- is a participant in the aid-for-denuclearisation talks, which have been stalled since 2009.

Davies said the purpose of his visit to the region was to stress "the importance of getting back to the necessity of denuclearisation" which he called the centrepiece of the talks.

He added that North Korea's repeated efforts to blame the US for its nuclear programme resembled a "broken record".

Davies' visit to Beijing comes amid North Korean state media reports that leader Kim Jong-Un is suffering a bout of ill health. Kim has not been seen in public since September 3.

The US envoy played down Kim's absence from the public eye.

"For us, what's important is not so much where the leader is but what North Korea's position is on the issues that are of deep concern to us," he said, declining to take part in what he described as "a game of 'Where in the World is Kim Jong-Un?'"

Davies also said the US was "very concerned" about three US detainees in North Korea -- Kenneth Bae, Jeffrey Fowle and Matthew Miller -- and was doing everything it could to gain access to them.

"I think it's unfortunate that North Korea continues to use these Americans ... as pawns," he said.

"They simply won't engage us," he said of North Korea. "It's very frustrating. It's unhelpful. And I think it puts the lie to the contention of the regime in Pyongyang that they want to have a relationship with us."

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