JAPAN-DPRK TALKS RUN IN ULAANBAATAR

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia /MONTSAME/ Intergovernmental official talks between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Japan ran November 15-16 in Ulaanbaatar under auspices of Mongolia's President. In September of 2007, Mongolia hosted a working group meeting of normalizing the ties between the DPRK and Japan launched in frames of the Six-Party Talks on the Korean Peninsula issue. At the present talks, the DPRK's delegation has been headed by Mr Son IL Ho, the Special Envoy for Normalization of Japan-DPRK relations and the Ambassador at the DPRK Foreign Affairs, the Japanese side--by Mr Shinsuke Sugiyama, the Special Representative for the North Korea Policy and director-general of Asian and Oceania Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. Mongolia has initiated an organization of the talks on its territory, and considers it as the contribution to ensuring of stability in the Northeast Asia. The Mongolian side hopes that the talks will help normalize the DPRK-Japan relations and improve the mutual understanding. After the official talks, Mr Sugiyama met with the media. He said it is not possible to say about the talks' content, nonetheless, they ran in a business-like and friendly atmosphere. As the "www.foxnews.com" website says, the Japanese side hopes it will shed light on decades-old abductions. In August in Beijing, lower-level negotiators from Japan and North Korea held their first bilateral talks in four years, but made little progress, according to the media. Japan wants information on the abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents in the 1970s and '80s. Japan believes at least one abductee may still be alive in the North, though North Korea denies this. Five abductees were returned to Japan in 2002. Japan and North Korea do not have formal diplomatic relations. The abduction issue and concerns over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs have long strained ties. Japanese officials indicated before the start of the talks that they expected them to be tough and not likely to lead to any immediate breakthroughs. North Korea's official media provided few details, reporting only that they were intended to deal with issues of mutual interest. Japan has imposed strict sanctions against the North and cut off most economic and cultural exchanges in 2006 after a missile launch. Tensions heightened again earlier this year when the North launched a rocket that it said carried a satellite, but that Japan and other countries criticized as a thinly disguised test of long-range missile technology. The launch failed just after takeoff. As the negotiators met in Mongolia, a group of university athletes from Japan's top sports university were holding a rare series of friendly competitions with students in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang. The 40 Japanese students squared off with their North Korean counterparts in judo, soccer and other events. B.Khuder