Powell meets Japanese PM on North Korea

US Secretary of State Colin Powell conferred last night with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on steps the two countries can take to encourage North Korea to curb its nuclear ambitions.

Powell dined with Koizumi shortly after arriving in Japan on the first leg of an Asian tour that also will take him to China and South Korea.

Powell noted during a briefing with reporters en route that Japan has responded to North Korea’s nuclear build-up by suspending deliveries of food aid and slowing moves to establish normal relations.

During a refuelling stop in Alaska, Powell said the United States has decided to make a new food donation to North Korea because hunger continues to be widespread in that country.

He said the Bush administration could have made a food donation earlier but was unable to do so because Congress only recently approved legislation providing money for food assistance.

“We don’t use food as a political weapon,” Powell told reporters, reaffirming long-standing US policy.

There have been no US food deliveries to North Korea since December. The United States donated more than 150,000 tons of food to North Korea last year, more than any other country.

“You go through all the politics and there are kids out there that are still starving,” Powell said.

This is Powell’s first trip to the region since North Korea disclosed to US officials last autumn that it was developing uranium-based nuclear weapons. Since then, the communist nation has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and taken steps that could enable it to develop plutonium-based nuclear weapons.

The administration has said that if North Korea dismantles its weapons in a “verifiable and irreversible” manner, the United States would be willing to provide substantial economic benefits to the impoverished country.

Powell leaves for China tomorrow. On Tuesday, he will attend the inauguration of South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun in Seoul.

But his main topic in all three countries will be to find ways to exert diplomatic pressure on North Korea to curb its nuclear ambitions.