Japanese foreign minister due in Seoul for talks on Afghanistan

(ATTN: RECASTS lead, 2nd para; CHANGES headline)
By Lee Chi-dong
SEOUL, Feb. 10 (Yonhap) -- Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone was to
arrive here late Tuesday for talks with his counterpart Yu Myung-hwan on
bolstering Seoul-Tokyo ties, countering the North Korean nuclear threats, and
jointly supporting the reconstruction of Afghanistan, officials said.
It will be Nakasone's first trip to South Korea since he assumed the post last
September. His talks with Yu, slated for Wednesday, are largely to follow up on
last month's summit between the leaders of the neighboring nations.
"In the foreign ministerial talks, the ministers also plan to discuss how to
strengthen trilateral cooperation with the United States in the administration of
President Barack Obama," a South Korean foreign ministry official said on the
customary condition of anonymity.
The two will finalize a plan for joint official development assistance projects
for Afghanistan, which is struggling to rehabilitate itself, he added.
Seoul and Tokyo reached a tentative deal in director-level discussions late last
month to push for joint aid for vocational training and bean cultivation in the
war-ravaged nation, according to the official.
The ministers will hold a joint press conference to brief reporters on the
results of their meeting, he said.
The cooperative efforts on bilateral and global issues are cast with the backdrop
of their long-running historical and territorial disputes, part of the legacy
from Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Japan's repeated attempts to whitewash its wartime atrocities and claim Dokdo, a
set of South Korean-controlled rocky islets in the East Sea, have been a source
of frequent diplomatic wrangling.
A ministry source said Yu and Nakasone may touch on the sensitive subject of
Tokyo's pursuit of a meeting between a former North Korean agent and the family
of a Japanese woman abducted by North Korea decades ago.
Japan wants the South Korean government to help the family members of Yaeko
Taguchi, who was abducted by North Korea at the age of 22, interview Kim
Hyeon-hee, a former death row inmate involved in the bombing of a Korean Air
passenger plane while in flight in 1987.
Kim is known to have learned Japanese language from Taguchi and said earlier that
Taguchi was alive at least until 1987.
Japan said it has confirmed the abductions of 17 Japanese citizens by Pyongyang in
the 1970s and 1980s. The North admitted to only 13 and allowed five of them to
return to Japan in 2002, claiming the others had died.
The Japanese minister is scheduled to return to Japan on Wednesday after paying a
courtesy call on President Lee Myung-bak.
lcd@yna.co.kr
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