Japan Feeling Left Out as U.S. Talks to Pyongyang

On May 8, officials in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, turned over to a visiting U.S. delegation about 18,000 pages of documentation related to materials produced at its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon.

The North Koreans have partially disabled the plant as part of the six-party negotiations and have agreed to blow up the cooling tower within 24 hours of being removed from the U.S. list of sponsors of terrorism, diplomats said.

The United States, for its part, has agreed to remove sanctions against North Korea, once it turns over a verifiable declaration of how much plutonium it has produced. At the same time, U.S. negotiators have eased their demands for other nuclear-related information from Pyongyang.

Watching these events unfold from within easy missile range of North Korea, the Japanese government feels out of the loop, according to several senior government officials. Tokyo is sending word to Washington "that we should not be left alone," said one senior official, echoing a commonly voiced concern.

The security relationship between Japan and the United States is extraordinarily close, with about 50,000 U.S. military personnel based here. Under a postwar treaty, the United States is obligated to defend Japan in case of military attack. Japan pays about 90 percent of the salaries of Japanese civilians who work at U.S. bases here.

When it comes to North Korea, however, Japan stakes out its own policy.

Japan recently renewed trade sanctions that ban all imports from the country and keep its ships of out Japanese ports.

Many countries are making plans to supply large amounts of food aid to North Korea. The United States announced Friday that it would send 500,000 tons, and South Korea, after several months of saying it would condition food aid on removal of nuclear weapons, now says it wants to talk with North Korea about providing food aid.

But the Japanese government is making no such plans. It cut off all aid to North Korea in 2004, after Pyongyang sent the partially cremated remains of what it said were deceased abductees back to Japan. DNA tests proved that the bones were not the remains of any of the missing eight. The apparent attempt to hoodwink Japan enraged the public.

Until its "trilogy" of issues is resolved, the Japanese government categorically rules out any kind of assistance to North Korea -- even if there was a catastrophic famine, as occurred in the 1990s.

In the interview, Fukuda said that it is in North Korea's financial interest to resolve Japan's concerns. When they are resolved, the Japanese have pledged to provide large amounts of cash -- possibly $10 billion -- and other economic aid to North Korea, as reparation for colonial occupation between 1910 and 1945.

"If I were to put myself in North Korean shoes," Fukuda said, a nuclear settlement without an abductee settlement would not be "a very favorable situation."