MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2003
Japan says nuclear threat no help to North Korea
REUTERS
TOKYO: Japan's defence minister said on Sunday North Korea was wrong to believe announcing it had nuclear weapons would ensure the survival of its regime.
"It will be a big miscalculation if it is reckoning that remarks that it has nuclear weapons will lead to the maintenance of its regime," Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba said on a TV Asahi current affairs programme.
US officials said last week a North Korean negotiator at talks in Beijing had said Pyongyang possessed nuclear arms
Experts say a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons would increase the threat to neighbouring Japan, China and South Korea and the 37,000 US troops based in the South, and would make it trickier to craft a solution to the six-month nuclear standoff.
Ishiba said he thought the reclusive communist state made the remarks on the nuclear weapons so it could win guarantees from the United States.
"Otherwise, the United States will not listen to them seriously," he said.
The United States last year grouped North Korea in an "axis of evil" along with Iran and pre-war Iraq.
The nuclear standoff began in October, when the United States said the North had admitted to a covert programme to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear arms.
The United States has said it will keep pursuing a diplomatic solution to defuse the crisis but the North has warned of war on the divided peninsula.
Ishiba said China, one of North Korea's few remaining communist friends, also wanted to see a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
"The United States and China will never accept North Korea possessing nuclear weapons. That's why China's involvement in the talks take on a meaning," Ishiba said.
Copyright 2003 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.