Japanese premier in bid to free captives

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will travel to North Korea for talks with leader Kim Jong Il in hopes of winning the release of family members of Japanese citizens abducted decades ago, the government said today.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Koizumi would travel there on May 22. The talks will also include discussions of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programmes and other bilateral issues with the goal of eventually normalising relations between the two estranged neighbours, he said.

“The aim is to restore trust between Japan and North Korea,” Hosoda said.

Speculation has been high in recent weeks that Koizumi could go to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, to secure the handover of the relatives – seven children and one husband – of five Japanese who were kidnapped by North Korea decades ago and sent back to Japan in 2002.

Hosoda said there was no guarantee that the relatives would be released when Koizumi goes to Pyongyang.

“This is up to the result of the visit and the negotiations,” Hosoda said.

The issue is highly emotional in Japan, where repatriated abductees and their supporters have criticised the government for lack of progress in talks with North Korea.

Such a trip, if successful, would be an important political coup for Koizumi, whose ruling coalition faces elections in the upper house of Parliament in July.

Hosoda acknowledged that negotiations so far had not covered much ground.

“Talks have made little progress so far, and we hope the upcoming visit will make a breakthrough,” Hosoda said.

Koizumi last travelled to North Korea for an unprecedented summit with Kim in September 2002.

Announcement of the new trip follows high-profile moves by Tokyo to apply pressure on Pyongyang, including a recently enacted measure allowing unilateral sanctions. Koizumi’s coalition is also pushing for a ban on North Korean ships in Japanese ports.

The families of the kidnapping victims said they had high expectations for Koizumi. Toru Hasuike, whose brother, Kaoru Hasuike, was abducted in the late 1970s and returned to Japan in 2002, called the trip “a brave decision”.

North Korea has acknowledged kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens to train spies in Japanese language and customs, although groups in Japan say it abducted many more. It said eight have since died, and allowed the five others to return to Japan after the 2002 summit.

Pyongyang has so far refused to release the former abductees’ families, including alleged US Army deserter Charles Robert Jenkins, who married one of the abductees and has stayed behind in North Korea with their two teenage daughters.

North Korea has argued in the past that the repatriation of the five was only temporary and Tokyo violated an agreement by keeping the former abductees in Japan. Japanese media have reported in recent weeks that Pyongyang could agree to release the relatives if Koizumi went to Pyongyang.