N Korea softens nuclear line

2004-05-22 11:35

Pyongyang - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il said he was willing to solve the international standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear program through six-way talks, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said on Saturday after a summit meeting with Kim.

"Chairman Kim Jong-Il said he aimed to de-nuclearise the Korean Peninsula. He said he wanted to make efforts towards a peaceful solution by utilising the six-way talks," Koizumi said at a press conference following a 90-minute summit with Kim.

Two rounds of six-way talks aimed at ending the nuclear stand-off have involved the two Koreas, Japan, the United States, China and Russia.

The row over North Korea's nuclear programme has been deadlocked since October 2002, when Washington said the Stalinist state had broken a 1994 nuclear freeze by launching a secret weapons drive.

Koizumi said that Tokyo would give North Korea 250 000 tonnes of rice and $10m worth of medical supplies as humanitarian aid, in a move widely predicted in Japan as a reward for a breakthrough at the summit on the nuclear issue or the question of Japanese kidnapped by the North.

At the summit, Kim also agreed to allow five children of two couples kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and repatriated to Japan in 2002 to travel to Tokyo with Koizumi to be reunited with their parents.

Koizumi said he told Kim that Japan "will not issue sanctions as far as North Korea abides by the Japan-North Korea Pyongyang Declaration," signed on September 17, 2002, when the two countries held their first-ever summit meeting.

In the declaration the two sides agreed to observe all international agreements for a comprehensive solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, and on the need for dialogue to resolve all security matters including nuclear and missile issues.

North Korea said it intended to extend its moratorium on missile tests beyond 2003 in line with the spirit of the declaration.

- AFP