Japan, N. Korea need new accord to improve ties: North envoy

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PYONGYANG, Sept. 12 Kyodo -
Japan and North Korea need a new agreement to improve bilateral relations, and
Pyongyang is ready to hold talks with the incoming Japanese administration of
Yukio Hatoyama, who advocates closer ties with other Asian nations, a senior
North Korean official said Friday.
Song Il Ho, ambassador for normalization talks with Japan, said in an interview
with Kyodo News in Pyongyang that an agreement the two countries struck in
August last year in Shenyang, China, has become ''invalid'' due to outgoing
Prime Minister Taro Aso's ''hostile'' policy toward North Korea.
''Under a Democratic Party of Japan-led administration, we need to get a fresh
start (in bilateral talks for a new agreement) based on the spirit of the
Pyongyang Declaration,'' Song said, referring to a 2002 declaration committing
the two countries to work toward normalizing relations.
A new tripartite coalition government will be launched after Hatoyama, leader
of the DPJ, is voted in as prime minister at a special parliamentary session
on Wednesday. Aso's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party suffered a crushing
defeat in the Aug. 30 general election.
''The Aso administration invalidated the (Shenyang) agreement,'' Song said,
criticizing the administration for giving priority to the issue of North
Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens despite Pyongyang's assertions that the
issue had been solved.
Under the Shenyang accord, North Korea was to reinvestigate the abduction cases
as swiftly as possible and try to complete the probe by fall last year, while
Japan was to ease sanctions once the reinvestigation starts.
North Korean officials have said that strengthened bilateral sanctions made it
difficult for the country to launch a fresh investigation into the abduction
cases.
''If a DPJ-led administration follows the LDP's hostile policy toward (North)
Korea, we don't expect to see any changes in (North) Korea-Japan relations,''
Song said.
''But if (Hatoyama) takes a step to seriously improve (North) Korea-Japan
relations, including the settlement of the past, we will move accordingly and
appropriately,'' he said.
Song said the main point of the Pyongyang Declaration -- signed between North
Korean leader Kim Jong Il and then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at
a 2002 meeting in Pyongyang -- is for Japan to settle issues stemming from
Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Asked what Japan should do to compensate for its past colonial rule, Song said,
''Japan must find out its own task by itself and do it'' because Japan is aware
of crimes it committed against the Korean people.
The envoy said North Korea ''took note of'' Hatoyama's stance that he will not
visit the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine and that his administration will focus on
developing relations with other Asian countries including North Korea.
Japan's neighbors see the Shinto shrine in Tokyo, which honors Japanese war
dead including several war criminals, as a symbol of the country's militarist
past.
Song said North Korea will never return to the six-party talks on
denuclearizing the country, suggesting that Pyongyang would seek bilateral
talks with the United States to address the North Korean nuclear standoff.
''The six-party talks are dead,'' he said. ''The reason behind tension in the
Korean Peninsula is the U.S. nuclear policy toward (North) Korea.''
North Korea quit the six-party talks, which involved China, the two Koreas,
Japan, Russia and the United States, in April in protest at a U.N. Security
Council statement denouncing its launch of what it claims was a satellite but
which was widely seen as a disguised missile test.
In mid-July, a U.N. sanctions committee slapped a new set of sanctions on North
Korea based on Resolution 1874, which the U.N. Security Council adopted June 12
in response to Pyongyang's second nuclear test on May 25.
==Kyodo