U.S. policy toward Pyongyang looks to test Japan relations

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) Japan's relations with its most important ally, the United States, are drifting apart and trans-Pacific tensions could run high in 2008, especially over U.S. diplomacy with North Korea.

A key test will come when Washington moves to take North Korea off its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a move Tokyo opposes until progress is made on Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese citizens.

The U.S. is considering removing the reclusive nation from the list if Pyongyang makes good on its promise to disable its key nuclear facilities and declare all its nuclear programs, and does not appear worried about the potential adverse effects on ties with Japan.

"We will not abandon Japan's concerns over abductees. We will continue to work on that even as we proceed with making progress on the denuclearization," a U.S. government official said.

Under the terms of the six-party deal on North Korea's nuclear programs, the U.S. is committed to beginning the process of delisting the country that President George W. Bush once branded part of an "axis of evil" as Pyongyang moves ahead with its denuclearization obligations.

Japan has pressed the United States not to remove North Korea from the blacklist until progress is made on the abduction issue, which has kept Tokyo and Pyongyang from normalizing bilateral relations.

Despite the U.S. administration's tilt toward taking North Korea off the list, a recently released study by the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress, warned that such action could "damage U.S. relations with Japan."

The study could lend support to lawmakers in both chambers of Congress who want the administration to keep North Korea on the list until Pyongyang releases abducted Japanese who Tokyo claims are still being held in North Korea.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced a bill to help resolve the kidnapping issue to the House of Representatives in September, followed by presentation of a similar but legally nonbinding resolution in the Senate by Sam Brownback in December.

"I question the merits of the State Department's decision to remove North Korea from its terrorist list," Brownback said in a statement. "It is important that the United States sends a loud and clear message to the North Korean regime that we will remain vigilant."

However, the chances that Ros-Lehtinen's stronger legislation will be approved to obstruct the delisting of North Korea are nil, given that there are many lawmakers who favor the progress to be made in eliminating the country's nuclear threat.

Don Oberdorfer, director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, criticized Japan for sticking to the abduction issue and thus playing a minor role in the six-way talks to denuclearize the North. "I'm rather disturbed by the position of Japan. It seems to me that . . . Japan is kind of falling behind the pace of the other countries in Northeast Asia, which are dealing with critical issues in the region," he said.

Echoing Oberdorfer's view, the U.S. government official pointed to the difficulty in pushing for diplomacy that strikes a balance between Japan's desire for the resolution of the kidnapping issue and hopes by other members of the six-way talks to create a nuclear-free North Korea.

"The Japanese side maybe thinks we are going too fast. I think the Korean and Chinese and Russian sides say we are going too slow. So while Japan's concern is very important, of course, it is a six-party negotiation, which makes it very complicated, and we need to also be addressing or considering the views of other members in the six-party talk as well," he said.

It is up to Bush to decide whether to take North Korea off the terrorism list. If he decides to in the absence of progress on the abduction issue, already strained ties with Japan could go further downhill.

According to a recent opinion poll by the Cabinet Office, the number of Japanese who do not think their country and the United States are on good terms increased 8.8 percentage points from a year earlier to 20.4 percent, the highest rate in a decade.

But the results may not entirely be a reflection of the Japanese public's anxiety about Washington's conciliatory policy toward Pyongyang, but also of problems on the part of Japan, such as the suspended refueling support for U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in and around Afghanistan.

In fact, many Japanese officials and experts wonder how much concern ordinary Japanese have about the abduction issue and what impact taking North Korea off the blacklist would have on bilateral relations.