Japan, NKorea restart talks amid historical rancour

HANOI, Mar 8 (Reuters) Japanese and North Korean diplomats met today for a second day of talks on restoring ties after meetings were cut short the day before over the sensitive issue of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang decades ago.

The talks in Hanoi follow a six-country agreement last month under which the reclusive, impoverished communist state would start shutting down its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for millions of dollars in energy aid and diplomatic recognition.

As part of the deal struck in Beijing, North Korea this week sent its chief nuclear envoy to the United States for talks and another delegation to meet the Japanese. The hosts, communist-run Vietnam, has good relations with both capitals.

''We will press once again our basic position on the abduction issue so that it will get across clearly to the North Korean leadership,'' Japan's top negotiator, Koichi Haraguchi, said before today's meeting at the North Korean mission.

The two sides met at the Japanese embassy yesterday morning but an afternoon session at the North Korean embassy was cancelled because of discord over the issue of Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s.

Tokyo says establishing diplomatic relations with Pyongyang is impossible without resolution of the issue.

North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese to train Pyongyang spies in Japanese culture and language, sparking outrage in Japan.

Five people were repatriated. Japan has demanded the return of any survivors, but Pyongyang says the other eight are dead.

''If Japan's position is indeed that dead people must be revived and sent back to Japan, then there is no point in sitting down with the Japanese side,'' a North Korean delegate was quoted as saying yesterday by a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan.

North Korea wants the settlement of issues stemming from Japan's harsh 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula, a problem that burned in the background of the Hanoi talks.

WARTIME SEX SLAVES In Tokyo, Kyodo news agency reported today that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might order a new study of the government's role in forcing women, many of them Koreans, to act as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War Two.

Abe has angered the Koreans and other Asians with remarks that appeared to question the state's role, although he has also said a 1993 apology acknowledging coercion remained in effect.

Separately yesterday at the United Nations, North Korea's envoy accused Japan of creating ''a horrific atmosphere of terror'' for pro-Pyongyang groups in Japan with investigations into their activities following Pyongyang's 2006 nuclear and missile tests.

Western, Asian and developing nations on the board of the Vienna-based UN International Atomic Energy Agency watchdog yesterday urged North Korea to honour the deal toward de-nuclearisation of the divided Korean Peninsula.

It called on Pyongyang to disable its nuclear arms programme, including plutonium production, by mid-April and readmit IAEA inspectors to verify the shutdown.

The six-party agreement included North and South Korea, which are still technically at war after the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean war. The others are the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

Reuters BDP DB0954