Japan mulls heavier sanctions on N.Korea: PM adviser http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-01-25T225529Z_01_L25713149_RTRUKOC_0_US-DAVOS-JAPAN-NORTHKOREA.xml
Thu Jan 25, 2007
By Natsuko Waki
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Japan may impose heavier economic sanctions on North Korea if the communist state refuses to abandon its nuclear program, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's national security adviser said on Thursday.
The sense of urgency over North Korea has grown since the impoverished state defied international warnings in October and carried out its first nuclear test, triggering sanctions from the United Nations.
Earlier this week, Russia's chief negotiator and deputy foreign minister Alexander Losyukov said that six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program could resume in February.
"The ultimate objective is to get North Korea to abandon its ambition of nuclear development," said Yuriko Koike, one of five special advisers appointed by Abe.
"At the same time we have to careful. By having six-party talks without a tangible outcome it only allows North Korea to have more time, so we have to be more serious to let North Korea abandon their projects," she said at the World Economic Forum.
Koike said Japan could extend sanctions that currently forbid Japanese imports to North Korea and a prohibition on North Korean ships entering Japanese ports. It stepped up its sanctions after the October nuclear test. "No further development has taken (place) yet but there is no doubt we will continue our sanctions. If those sanctions don't work we have to think about doing something more, probably heavier sanctions," Koike said.
China hosts the six-way talks grouping North Korea, South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia, which began in 2003.
ABDUCTEES
Koike also renewed Tokyo's pressure on North Korea to return Japanese abductees who were kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies. North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese. The issue of the abductees is a major thorn in relations between Japan and North Korea and Tokyo has vowed not to normalize diplomatic ties until the question is resolved. It has linked the abduction issue to the nuclear program talks.
"The abduction issue is the real human rights issue," Koike said. Five abducted Japanese were sent home in 2002 and Pyongyang says the other eight are dead. Tokyo wants more information about those eight and four others it says were kidnapped.
Koike spoke before a Japanese night at the World Economic Forum, which included a documentary film on abductees Megumi Yokota who disappeared on her way home from school in 1977. Pyongyang says Yokota hanged herself in 1994.
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