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LIMA: Japan and South Korea on Thursday urged neighboring North Korea to come up with a roadmap on ending its nuclear program amid a long delay in a six-nation disarmament deal.
Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone, who took office in September, held his first talks with his South Korean counterpart Yu Myung-Hwan after they attended a two-day meeting of Asia-Pacific ministers in Lima, Peru.
"North Korea should issue a solid document to verify the framework of its denuclearisation under the six-way talks," Nakasone told reporters following the talks.
Yu "told me that he completely shares the view and said, 'Let's work together on this point heading into the next talks,'" the Japanese foreign minister said.
Washington last month removed North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism saying Pyongyang had agreed to steps to verify its nuclear disarmament and pledged to resume the disabling of its atomic plants.
But nations involved in six-party talks -- China, Japan, the United States, Russia, and the two Koreas -- have yet to endorse a plan for the hardline communist state to fully verify its nuclear record.
Nakasone said Japan was asking China, the chair of the six-way talks, to arrange a new round. No meeting is set, even though China said in October that the talks would take place soon.
US President George W. Bush, who once branded North Korea as part of an "axis of evil", defied some conservatives by pursuing the pact with North Korea, which stands to gain badly needed aid and security guarantees.
The White House said Bush hoped to make progress on North Korea at this weekend's Asia-Pacific leaders' summit in Lima, the outgoing president's last scheduled foreign trip.
Japan had opposed the US decision to take North Korea off the terrorism blacklist due to a bitter row over Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.
North Korea agreed in June to start a new probe into the abductions but announced a delay in the investigation in September as Prime Minister Taro Aso came to power.
The conservative premier has refused to provide aid to North Korea under the six-nation deal until there is progress on the abductions.
- AFP/yt
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