As Hitoshi Tanaka reminded us last week, on the abductions issue, Tokyo has yet to work out that it has to do a shoben or get off the otearai. The diplomatic scrum over the last few days might just encourage the toilet training that is necessary. The abductions issue is more a deep and murky creature of Japanese domestic politics than core Japanese strategic interests.
Tanaka is persuasive: ‘Progress in resolving the abductees issue will come along with further progress toward a resolution of the nuclear issue. Conversely, there may be no progress on the abductees issue if negotiations concerning the nuclear issue stall. Thus, in addition to strengthening linkages with the other nations involved in the Six-Party Talks and working with them to resolve the nuclear issue, Japan must also push forward comprehensive bilateral negotiations that cover more than only the abductees issue.’
The conservative and hardline Sankei Shimbun, and sometimes anti-American, Japanese daily, is reported to have noted not unsympathetically that:
‘(Ambassador) Hill once challenged (Japanese) Foreign Ministry officials, “You oppose to removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terror. Then you should compile your own list. Can you put Iran, from which Japan imports oil, on such a list?”
He also asked the representatives of families of abductees,
“There is an Iranian Airline office near the US Embassy in Tokyo. Iran once kept American diplomats hostage and an old friend of mine was among them. He still suffers from that traumatic experience. What do you think about that”’
And that’s about all that needs to be said on that.
Cook says that key goals of the Six Party Talks, of which he lists five, have been jeopardised.
- Preclude bilateral talks with Pyongyang: The Six Party Talks have always been primarily a fig leaf for sorting out the bilateral issues between Washington and Pyongyang and never precluded bilateral talks when needed.
- Stronger US communication and coordination with other five parties: Around the divergences of interest always there, including on the Japanese abductions issue.
- Concerted pressure on Pyongyang from the US and other negotiating parties: The Six Parties have maintained remarkable coordination given (2) and in particular between Washington and Beijing.
- Reassert the US’s central constructive security role in Northeast Asia: Breaking through on this with Chinese help begins to do that in a realistic way.
- Stop North Korea going nuclear: That cat’s already out of the bag and the question is whether there is now a long shot of getting it back in.
The Six Party Talks remain the best structure for working towards a comprehensive settlement with North Korea on which much work is yet to be done.
Establishing some basis for progress on the thorny issues yet to be resolved between Washington and Pyongyang was always the key to a more comprehensive settlement of the Korean problem and Hill has ultimately delivered that despite all the obstacles that have been thrown his way both in Washington, Tokyo, not to mention in Pyongyang.