TOKYO (AP) - North Korea wants to resolve its differences with Japan and restart talks with Tokyo on establishing diplomatic relations, a former Japanese lawmaker was quoted as saying Wednesday. Taku Yamasaki, a former national lawmaker in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's conservative party, made the remarks while briefing Koizumi on recent meetings he held with North Korean officials in China, Kyodo News reported. Yamasaki and another politician from the party went to the northern Chinese city of Dailin last week on what was billed as a private diplomatic initiative to jump-start negotiations with the reclusive communist state.
He told Koizumi at a dinner late Wednesday he came away from the meetings "convinced" that North Korea wants to normalize relations with Japan during the prime minister's tenure, Kyodo said, citing unidentified participants at the dinner.
| Ex-legislator goes to China and makes peace with the NKors, none of whom are on tape. Sure. |
The two estranged nations appeared to be on the verge of establishing diplomatic relations in September 2002, when North Korea admitted at a landmark summit that its spies kidnapped about a dozen Japanese decades earlier. Talks collapsed after North Korea refused to allow the children of five surviving abductees to join their parents in Japan and later revealed that it had been covertly developing nuclear weapons.
Koizumi says North Korea must resolve both issues "comprehensively."
| So they're standing with us. |
His spokesman could not be reached to comment on Wednesday's report.
|