LIMA (AFP)--U.S. President George W. Bush promised Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso Saturday that the U.S. will "hold the North Koreans to account" for abducted Japanese nationals, the White House said.
Bush told Aso in talks in Lima "that he knew how very sensitive it is and that he believed that we had handled it delicately and that we want to hold the North Koreans to account on that issue," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Bush met with Aso and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak - separately and together - as he pushed on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit for a new round of six-country diplomacy aimed at denuclearizing North Korea.
"We don't have a date to announce yet, but there is an agreement to have a meeting. And so we're just working to make sure everyone's schedules work out before the Chinese would announce anything as to the timing," Perino said.
Bush wants the next round to endorse a verification mechanism for North Korea's aid-for-nuclear-disarmament deal and hopes its partners - China, which hosts the talks, Japan, Russia, and South Korea - will agree to meet in early December. Perino later referred to "that meeting in the beginning of December."
Bush, who leaves office Jan. 20, 2009, sought to reassure staunch ally Tokyo on the sorely sensitive issue of the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.
Japan has refused to give aid to the secretive Stalinist regime until the issue is resolved and sharply criticized Washington's decision to take the North off a terrorism blacklist with the matter still open.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il admitted at a landmark 2002 summit with then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that his regime kidnapped Japanese people to train its spies in the enemy nation's language and customs.
He allowed five to return, and said eight others were dead. Japan insists more are alive and that North Korea has not acknowledged other abductees.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 22, 2008 14:13 ET (19:13 GMT)

Publié le 22 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones