Posted on 02/11/2005 11:19:24 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Japan Urges North Korea to Rejoin Disarmament Talks
By JAMES BROOKE and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: February 12, 2005
TOKYO, Feb. 11 - The day after North Korea declared that it possessed nuclear weapons, Japan's prime minister urged the North to re-engage in disarmament talks. He spoke as the clock was running down toward a new law that will put economic pressure on North Korea by barring most of its ships from Japanese ports starting March 1.
In Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney met South Korea's foreign minister on Friday and pressed him not to reward the North by pursuing trade deals with the country - a point on which the United States and South Korea have increasingly been divided. According to officials close to the discussion, Mr. Cheney specifically urged the South not to fill a North Korean request for hundreds of thousands of tons of fertilizer, saying that the nations trying to disarm the North had to take a common approach if they hoped to force its president, Kim Jong Il, to choose between nuclear arms and deeper isolation.
China, officials said, is considering delaying or a mission to North Korea scheduled for next week to urge the country to end the eight-month hiatus in talks.
But Mr. Cheney, the member of Mr. Bush's national security team considered to be most hawkish on North Korea, told his South Korean visitor, Ban Ki Moon, that the United States would stick with the six-party negotiations that the North has rejected, and gave no indication that Washington was considering military action or a quarantine of the country, the officials said.
Separately, the White House rejected a demand from North Korea for one-on-one negotiations, instead of group talks that would also include Japan, China, South Korea and Russia. President Bush has argued that bilateral negotiations failed in the 1990's because North Korea acted in bad faith, starting a second suspected nuclear program after agreeing to freeze its program in a 1994 accord with the Clinton administration.
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, insisted Friday that even within the larger talks, North Korea's negotiators would have many chances to face their American counterparts. "There's plenty of opportunities for North Korea to speak directly with us in the context of the six-party talks," Mr. McClellan said.
While the administration talked about diplomacy, several officials said they were exploring ideas to put renewed economic pressure on the North. One senior American official said it was likely that the administration would search for new ways to squeeze the flow of money that runs into North Korea.
Talking to reporters in Sapporo, Japan, about 600 miles across the Sea of Japan from North Korea and a center of trade with the country, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi maintained Japan's public stance that the tightening shipping rules were not sanctions against North Korea.
The rules, scheduled to go into effect in three weeks, require all ships over 100 tons calling at Japanese ports to have property and indemnity insurance, which few North Korean ships have. It was passed last year after one Japanese city had to pay $6.4 million to salvage a North Korean shipwreck and to clean up its oil spill.
The driving force for Japanese economic sanctions on North Korea is popular anger over North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970's coupled with widespread uneasiness about North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile program.
North Korea fired one missile over Japan in 1998, prompting Japan to join the United States in its effort the build a missile-defense shield.
The law is expected to have a crushing effect on North Korea's seafood industry. In 2003, only 2.5 percent of North Korean ships visiting Japan had insurance. In recent weeks, only one North Korean ship, a passenger-cargo ferry, is known to have purchased insurance.
The insurance barrier will also be felt at Tokyo's Tsukiji market, the world's largest fish market, where North Korea is a major supplier of snow crabs, sea urchins and clams. As Asia's richest nation, Japan is the best market for North Korea's fishing fleet.
Ping!
Yeah right. Good. Keep NK at the table. Keep the talks in focus to the eyes of the public while stabbing NK economically behind the scenes.
It is just so appropriate. Japan for years has gripped about the U.S. forces stationed in Guam and other areas of Japan.
Now a beligerant nuclear North Korea and a big Dog on the block, China hanging around Japan and all of the sudden the Japaneese are again geting cozy to the idea of U.S. troops being there?
Also instead of being oficially a defensive military the Japaneese constitution is changed to assist in military matters outside of its territory. Why? To keep good relations with its largest benefactor, the U.S.
Getting a little nervous about your past aggressiveness and war crimes against these and other countries in the past?
Japan could start early enforcement of this law right now rather than waiting the 16 days. Japan is in worse shape than when we were during the Cuban Missile crisis in terms of % population threatened by a NK nuclear weapon.
In that crisis, only seven days passed from the first sighting of nuclear-tipped SS-4 missiles in Cuba by a U-2 plane to JFK announcing blockade of the island.
Japan could probably assemble a nuke by sunrise tomorrow if they so desired. If they haven't already.
OH MAN I not suprise if Japan would build a nuke or already have one to just in case Little Kim get any ideas
Japan is between a sweat and a hard place. Korean people owe them revenge big time and Japan is naked under their nuclear gun.
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