North Korea says it will boycott Japan in six-party talks

(ATTN: UPDATES with details)
SEOUL, Dec. 6 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Saturday slammed Japan as "a hurdle" to
the denuclearization process and said it will boycott Tokyo in the upcoming fresh
round of six-party nuclear talks.
"We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it even if it
impudently appears in the conference room, lost to shame," a spokesman for North
Korea's Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying by the North's Korean Central News
Agency.
"It is only Japan out of those parties that has not done anything to fulfill its
commitment but is still refusing to do so," the spokesman said.
Japan has been reluctant to provide 200,000 tons of energy as part of a broader
aid-for-denuclearization deal, linking the assistance to North Korea's abduction
of Japanese citizens decades ago.
North Korea returned five Japanese abductees in 2002, soon after an unprecedented
summit between the leaders of the two countries, but Japan claims several more
abductees are still alive in North Korea. The North says they are dead.
"Such country has neither justification nor qualification to participate in the
talks. On the contrary, it only lays a hurdle in the way of achieving the common
goal," the spokesman said.
"It is the ulterior intention of Japan to bar the denuclearization of the
peninsula from coming true and put spurs to its moves to turn itself into a
military power under the pretext of the nuclear issue,"
The fresh round of six-party talks, also involving South Korea, the United
States, China and Russia, is scheduled to open in Beijing on Monday.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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