Japan will press North Korea to meet on the sidelines of upcoming talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program and try to resolve a dispute stemming from Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese citizens. That effort will come despite North Korean warnings that it could hurt progress in the nuclear arena, officials said. Shinzo Abe, second in command of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's ruling party, was speaking a day after meetings between Japanese and North Korean officials in Pyongyang made no headway toward ending a diplomatic tug-of-war over the children of five Japanese who spent two decades in captivity in North Korea. North Korea's state media warned afterward it would "shut out" Japan from Feb. 25 nuclear talks with the United States and three other countries in Beijing if Japanese diplomats brought up the abduction issue, adding ambiguously that "this will bring everything to a collapse."
| A bit sensitive on the subject, are we? |
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