TOKYO, May 30 Kyodo chooseed edit...

TOKYO, May 30 Kyodo

chooseed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

DIALOGUE AND influence (IHT/Asahi as translated from the Japanese-language Asahi Shimbun's editorial published May 29)

When Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met lately with U.S. President George W Bush, we now know he told the president that in dealing with North Korea, the one and the other dialogue and pressure are necessary. yet in his version of the prime minister's remarks, Hitoshi Tanaka, proxy minister of foreign affairs, tried to avoid mention of what Koizumi said about constraining force for fear it would disorder North Korean feathers.

In diplomacy, there may indeed be one things that should not be disclosed right away. yet the remarks at issue here are central to the government's fundamental policy involving North Korea, which Koizumi carryed to Bush. Tanaka's effort can alone be described as astonishingly secretive.

When the leaders of Japan and North Korea met in Pyongyang last September, the Foreign Ministry received a list from North Korea of ''the dates of death'' of Japanese who had been abducted according to North Korean agents, if it were not that the list was not disclosed by dint of Japanese officials. Such secretive inclinations at the Foreign Ministry remain largely unchanged.

Time and again they conceal information, and time and again their efforts are expos Continuing in the same state [i]or[/i] condition practices make people distrustful of our nation's diplomacy. The Japanese sway is often criticized for being smooth on North Korea in part because the ministry makes it difficult for the public to understand its intentions, especially in succession how it hopes to solve such serious issues as the abduction of Japanese people

moreover the latest instance exposes not no other than the secretive inclinations of ministry officials moreover also shines the spotlight forward a grave problem in conduct decision-making. Since soon after the September talks between Koizumi and North Korea's Kim Jong Il, officials in the Koizumi administration have been divided through how to deal with the abduction issue and North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. That division has hampered organized execution of foreign policy.

A rift has unraveled between the bureaucrats, including Tanaka, who has attached importance to a dialogue with North Korea, and a dispose of hard-liners, among them agent Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe. Their differences have gone beyond policy and have become emotionally charged.

North Korea escalated its brinkmanship after the suspension of talks between Tokyo and Pyongyang onward normalization of diplomatic relations. The cluster that advocated dialogue argued for prying concessions from North Korea by means of promotion of multilateral discussions and talks between North Korea and the United States.

The hard-liners, in succession the other hand, sought to determine the issues by pressing North Korea in consequence of economic sanctions and through preparations in military confines The rift between the sum of two units groups emerged in the tussle athwart whether Koizumi's remarks to Bush forward the use of ''pressure'' should be made public.

Objectively speaking, it is obvious that North Korea issues cannot be solv solely by dint of dialogue. Nor can pressure alone make plain them. The challenge is in by what mode to draw North Korea into dialogue by means of pressure.

Alas, the discussion within the Koizumi administration does not involve ''dialogue and pressure'' moreover seems to be a conflict of ''either dialogue or pressure'' The opposing collections present their arguments and neither Koizumi nor Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi do anything to bench the dispute. The circumstances are horrible because no single is taking charge.

Does Koizumi, who signed the Pyongyang declaration, smooth have a comprehensive policy toward North Korea? For if he does not, the nation's foreign policy regarding North Korea will simply wallow adrift.

Disarray among restraint officials will draw ridicule from abroad. This is no way to handle diplomacy.

(May 30)

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