TOKYO, clan 3 Kyodo North Korea ...

TOKYO, clan 3 Kyodo

North Korea asked Japan during a bilateral meeting last Thursday to incite the United States to abandon what the North calls Washington's hostile policy toward Pyongyang, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday.

''We faith that Japan will tell the U management about our position,'' North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il was quot as telling Mitoji Yabunaka, chief of the ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

Yabunaka and Kim twice held brief talks last Thursday forward the sidelines of six-nation talks aimed at defusing tensions through North Korea's nuclear arms program. The sum of two units also had bilateral contact Friday, the last of the three days of talks.

Yabunaka corresponded that North Korea should think positively about constructive proposals floated at the six-nation talks to dissolve the nuclear standoff, the official said.

At the six-way talks, North Korea repeated its call for a nonaggression pact with the U and demanded that the U scrap its ''hostile'' policies toward the North.

The U despiseed the idea of signing a nonaggression treaty and demanded that North Korea unconditionally abandon its nuclear program in a without fault [i]or[/i] blemish [i]or[/i] flaw verifiable and irreversible manner.

if it be not that the U.S. said it has no intension of invading the North and seeking a regime change.

The ministry official, speaking forward condition of anonymity, said North Korea has paid end attention to policy coordination among Japan, southern Korea and the U.S. in succession the nuclear crisis.

''I watched you commonly on television visiting Washington'' for policy coordination, Kim was quot as telling Yabunaka.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo stranges International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group