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Japan: Missing partner in US-North Korea
talks
By Axel Berkofsky
While
the United States and North Korea have agreed to meet in
Beijing this week to discuss Pyongyang's suspected
nuclear weapons program, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
seems determined to keep his promise never to talk to
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi again.
Pyongyang's Dear Leader, who, according to his
aides, has been "humiliated" too many times by Koizumi,
is reportedly not yet ready to "allow" Japan to
participate in the US-North Korea talks, scheduled to
take place in Beijing on Wednesday.
Observing
the US-North Korea talks from a distance, however, seems
fine with Koizumi, who, unlike the right-wingers and
North Korea-bashers within Japan's ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP), didn't lose much sleep over the
snub regarding talks with Pyongyang.
Shortly
after Washington and Pyongyang agreed last week to talk
about North Korean nukes, US President George W Bush got
on the phone and promised Koizumi he would put in a good
word for him. Tokyo will have a place at the negotiation
table "very soon", Bush said.
Bush gave the
prime minister his word that the US will "represent"
Japan's interests in Beijing and ended the conversation
reassuring his concerned friend that the US has no plans
to attack Syria just yet.
The prime minister
thought all this was good news, briefed the public on
his chat with Washington and ordered his diplomats to
get ready to join the efforts to keep the US from
bombing the next member of Bush's "axis of evil".
Japan's diplomats, it seems, are up for the job
and confident that Japan too will be talking to
Pyongyang before too long. "The format of the talks will
be expanded in the future and also include Japan and
South Korea," announced Mitoji Yabunaka, director of the
Asian and Oceania Affairs Bureau at the Japanese
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Another optimistic
ministry official claims that Pyongyang doesn't really
have much of a choice but to have Tokyo at the
negotiation table. "The outstanding issues between Japan
and North Korea are central to resolving the whole North
Korea issue. We will therefore insist Japan take part in
the next round of the talks, if there is one at all."
But LDP secretary general Taku Yamazaki
complains that Japan has been "left out" as usual,
asserting that "Japan should not support the trilateral
format among the US, North Korea and China".
The
country's right-wingers and North Korea hardliners
within and outside the ruling LDP agree, saying that the
US is not at all interested in representing Japan's
interests in Beijing. Washington, they maintain, only
wants Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions and
really couldn't care less about the whereabouts and fate
of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents
over the past decades.
Shortly after the
successful Japan-North Korea summit in Pyongyang last
September, North Korea admitted that its agents had
indeed kidnapped 15 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and
1980s reportedly "employing" them as language
instructors for North Korean spies. Only five of the
abductees-turned-language teachers, however, returned to
Japan last October, as Pyongyang explained that the
others have either died a "natural death" or were
victims of automobile accidents.
The Japanese
government calls the kidnappings "state-sponsored
terrorism" and fears that up to 100 other Japanese
citizens may have been abducted by North Korea over the
past 20 years.
There will be no more talks on
the abductees as far Pyongyang is concerned, announced
the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA),
which said the issue was settled when Kim Jong-il
"apologized" for the kidnappings last year. "Japan must
finally stop grumbling about the matter. The abduction
of Japanese was an accidental case perpetrated by
individuals," KCNA concluded.
Japan, obviously,
remains unconvinced and urged the US to keep the issue
of abducted Japanese in mind when it goes to the
negotiating table in China. The US promised it would,
although it seems unlikely that Washington will pressure
Pyongyang too much to come up with more details on what
happened to abducted Japanese in the past when North
Korean nukes worry the United States in the present.
Discussing its nuclear-weapons development
program with the US, however, seems much less pressing
for Pyongyang. Although the the meeting with the US was
announced last Wednesday, coverage of the US-North Korea
meeting in Beijing just made it on to KCNA's website.
Nor is the meeting being top-billed on the website. It
would seem that "domestic events" - such as the
description of gifts given to Kim Jong-il by the Young
Forces of Nepal, detailed coverage on schoolkids camping
and a folk-dance festival at Pyongyang's Grand Theater -
are more important.
Japan and South Korea get no
mention in KCNA's reporting on the upcoming talks. Uncle
Sam is still the one to talk to as far as nukes are
concerned. "The nuclear issue is a matter between the
DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] and the US
in every sense and it, therefore, can be settled
peacefully only through the DPRK-US dialogue," Pyongyang
maintains.
Excluding Japan from the talks was
especially disappointing for Japan's North Korea
hardliners and defense hawks in the government, who over
recent months thought that threatening economic
sanctions and preemptive attacks on North Korea would
secure Japan a seat on the negotiation table.
North Korea, however, remained unimpressed by
Tokyo's ill-fated attempts to flex its military muscles,
prompting some Japanese government officials to suggest
a change in strategy, urging Japan to swallow it pride
this time.
The good news is coming from Beijing
this time.
China is not opposed to Japan and
South Korea taking part in further talks with North
Korea, reported Japan's Kyodo News. "China is flexible
about the form of dialogue, if the parties agree,"
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told Japan's
opposition leader Naoto Kan during his three-day visit
to Beijing last week.
However, before North
Korea says that before it becomes any more flexible
talking to Japan and others, the US must be prepared to
give up its "hostile policy towards peace-loving North
Korea first".
The United States, of course, is
prepared to offer very little as far as US Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is concerned. "The United
States has no plans to reward North Korea even if
Pyongyang abandons its suspected nuclear-weapons
development program," Rumsfeld announced late last week,
offering Pyongyang a good excuse not to show up in
Beijing at all.
Away from the megaphones and
back to diplomacy, Japan's liberal press urges the US to
keep its cool, pointing out that North Korea will need
some incentives (other than not being bombed by the US)
to give up its "bad behavior" of producing nuclear
weapons.
Whether Pyongyang is ready for a
diplomatic charm offensive in Beijing remains to be
seen, although analysts believe North Korea will demand
economic assistance and cash in return for abandoning
its nuclear-weapons program all the same.
This
is where Japan and South Korea could step in and provide
North Korea with food and non-nuclear energy to feed the
hungry and turn the lights back on in Pyongyang, the
optimists hope.
Realists, on the other hand,
fear that any help at all from Japan is pretty much off
the agenda as long as the abduction issue remains
pending and North Korea a synonym for "evil" in Japan.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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