NORTH-EAST ASIA: Pyongyang Tests Tempers of Tokyo Seoul (1)

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Dec 2 1994 (IPS) - The two countries that are supposed to provide North Korea with new light-water reactors are trying hard not to lose patience with their beneficiary.

Reports reaching here say the North Koreans, in technical talks with U.S. officials in Beijing this week, are finding fault with the South Korean reactors that are supposed to replace their graphite-moderated versions.

Officials in Tokyo, meanwhile, are still peeved that Pyongyang last week cancelled a meeting with a Japanese political delegation that was supposed to pave the way for a normalisation of ties between Japan and North Korea.

In October, North Korea signed a landmark nuclear accord with the United States in Geneva, the terms of which included four billion dollar light-water nuclear reactors provided to Pyongyang by South Korea and Japan.

In return, Pyongyang promised to freeze its suspected nuclear programme and open up its nuclear facilities to inspections — but only after the new reactors are installed, in five years.

South Korea and Japan had been shut out of the talks as demanded by Pyongyang. But both have gone along with the terms of the agreement, and with the United States are likely to be the only members next year of the Korea Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) that will take care of the light-water reactors project.

Tokyo had pledged to support the accord despite the absence of a peace treaty between Japan and North Korea.

In a bid toward resuming normal relations with Pyongyang that had been in deep freeze since 1992, Japanese officials also said they would not to press for information about Japanese citizens suspected to have been kidnapped by Pyongyang.

But Pyongyang is snubbing such overtures because of what it says are Japanese attempts to undermine a four-year-old joint declaration between the ruling Workers Party of North Korea and two major Japanese political parties urging Tokyo to grant war reparations to North Korea.

The declaration has recently come under tough criticism from Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) officials who argue that it does not have any binding power over the Japanese government. They say Tokyo does not have to pay North Korea after the end of World War II, when Japan surrendered in August 1945.

Political analysts here say North Korea’s insistence that the earlier agreement holds is a slap on Japan.