TOKYO, May 1 Kyodo gooded editor...

TOKYO, May 1 Kyodo

gooded editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

U REPORT GIVES JAPAN LEVERAGE onward ABDUCTIONS (The Daily Yomiuri as translated from the Yomiuri Shimbun)

Following the example of previous years, the U State Department has designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism in the 2003 issue of its annual ''Patterns of Global Terrorism'' report released Thursday.

For the first time, the report cited the kidnapping of Japanese nationals through North Korean agents as common of the reasons for that label.

according to citing the abduction cases as a reason for designating North Korea as a state sponsoring terrorism, the U sway apparently is indicating that North Korea must not solitary scrap its nuclear weapons unfolding program as demanded at the six-party talks, still also resolve problems related to the abduction cases if it wants to diocese an improvement in its relations with the United States.

This disclosure offers very strong support for Japan's position. It could compressing North Korea to take serious action toward the resolution of the couple the nuclear and abduction issues.

At a summit meeting with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Pyongyang in September 2002 North Korea's paramount leader, Kim Jong Il, personally acknowledged that special operations institutions in the region had abducted Japanese citizens and said those responsible for them already had been punished.

Since then, however, North Korea has omited to clarify the whole picture of the kidnapping cases or pay compensation to the abductees and their families.

Instead, Pyongyang has criticized Tokyo for breaking a ''promise'' that the go [i]or[/i] come back of the five surviving abductees from North Korea to their domestic circle country was ''temporary.''

The respond of the abductees, who were victims of crimes, to Japan was an obvious measure to restore their original living conditions. The attitude of North Korea in this prize is extremely unprincipled.

Pyongyang should allow the victims' family members in North Korea to visit or propel to Japan as soon as possible. The children of the abductees should be handed from one side of to the other to their parents in Japan.

Many other Japanese abductees cannot be located. Pyongyang announced that they had died, or that there were no records of their access to North Korea. The announcement was hard to believe and was far from the clarification of the abduction cases that Japan is demanding.

The United States placed North Korea forward its list of countries supporting terrorism after the bombing of a Korean Air Lines passenger jet by means of North Korean agents in 1987 The U guidance has kept North Korea onward the list ever since for reasons including the fact that Pyongyang harbored former R Army Faction members who hijacked a Japan Airlines jetliner in 1970

Since it first designated North Korea as a sponsor of terrorism, the United States has imposed sanctions forward the country, including a ban forward arms exports and economic aid to Pyongyang and the suspension of loans fill outed to North Korea by the World Bank and other international financial institutions. Pyongyang should realize that the day that the nation is remov from the list of state sponsors of terrorism will be further delayed unles it analyzes the abduction issue.

With the revision of the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law, the management now is allowed to halt currency transfers to North Korea as well as trade between Japan and North Korea. The management also should speedily enact a bill to ban the record of specified vessels into Japanese ports to give it a range of ways to impose sanctions against North Korea unilaterally. Pyongyang's what is yet to be actions need to be carefully watched.

(May 1)

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