Thursday, May 8, 2003
Japan hints at economic sanctions against North Korea over abductions
Agence France-Presse Tokyo, May 8
Japan said on Thursday it could impose economic sanctions against Pyongyang over North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the Cold War years. "We need to study the situation in various lights," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said, when asked about demands from the families of abductees for such sanctions. "It is not quite clear if a simple reprisal will be effective." Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, the top government spokesman, was more forthcoming on the question of sanctions.
"We must think about such a thing, as a matter of course, depending on North Korea's attitude," Fukuda said. "It is necessary to have adequate consultations with countries concerned," Fukuda told a regular press briefing.
Koizumi and Fukuda were speaking after they separately met for the first time with the five abductees who have refused to go back to the Stalinist state after they were allowed to make homecoming visits last October. In a landmark summit with Koizumi last September, North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-Il admitted that Pyongyang had kidnapped Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s to use them as spy tutors and for other purposes. North Korean authorities said only five of the 13 abductees have survived but Japan insisted the others might be still alive, along with dozens more who were also kidnapped by the North.
The five survivors, two married couples and the wife of a US army soldier listed as a deserter, are now demanding that their immediate relatives - seven children and the American husband - be allowed to come to Japan. They attended a rally here late on Wednesday, joined by some 6,000 people who supported the demand.
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