No role for Japan at six-party talks – N.Korea

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Wednesday Japan has
no role to play at six-country talks aimed at ending the
North’s nuclear programs because Tokyo complicates an already
difficult process by raising the issue of its abductees.

Japanese officials have said they plan to raise the topic
of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea decades ago when
six-country nuclear talks resume on July 26. North Korea has
boycotted the talks for over a year.

“Japan will find nothing to do at the future six-party
talks even if it attends them unless it drops its crooked
viewpoint and way of thinking,” the North’s official KCNA news
agency said.

“The six-party talks remain unchanged in their basic
orientation and nature that the talks should substantially
contribute to the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,”
KCNA said.

North Korea has said several times in its official media
that it does not want Japan to participate in the six-party
talks that also include China, Russia, South Korea and the
United States.

North Korea has admitted to abducting 13 Japanese people in
the 1970s and 1980s to help train its spies.

Five were repatriated, and Pyongyang says the other eight
are dead. Japan has been pressing for better information on the
eight and another two who Tokyo says were also kidnapped.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week the
issue of Japanese abductees was a valid subject to be dealt
with at the six-party talks.

But South Korea sees the issue as a strictly bilateral
matter between North Korea and Japan to be discussed on the
sidelines of the nuclear talks.

“Our basic position is that the purpose of the six-party
talks is to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, and so
discussions should focus on that,” a South Korean official said
on Friday.

The talks resume on July 26 in Beijing after a break of 13
months. Three previous rounds since August 2003 produced no
substantive progress.