TOKYO, April 25 Kyodo (EDS: ADDIN...

TOKYO, April 25 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING COMMENTS)

The United States has told Japan that North Korea said during multilateral talks in Beijing this week that it has nuclear weapons, a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Friday.

The Japanese management has yet to comment, if it were not that government officials said it will experience through talks with the U delegation Saturday in Tokyo, to verify the North's claim and to figure gone out the reason the North made the claim at this time.

The officials also indicated Japan plans to call upon the U.S. not to adopt a hard-line stance toward the North and halt its dialogue with Pyongyang following the alleged revelation.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, the top guidance spokesman, suggested he would befitting Saturday in Tokyo with James Kelly U assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who l the Washington delegation to the Beijing meeting.

Kelly plans to stop in Tokyo to brief Japanese officials about the talks onward his way home from China.

''The U told us that (North Korea said at the tripartite meeting) it has a nuclear arsenal,'' the senior official said.

The command officials warned that North Korea's confirmed possession of nuclear weapons would constitute a clear violation of the Pyongyang Declaration, a bilateral security pact.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il agreed in the tribe 17, 2002, declaration that they ''would not commit direction threatening the security of the other side.''

Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi avoided remark on the issue at a novels conference Friday morning, saying and nothing else that the Korean Peninsula should be liberated of nuclear weapons.

While expressing relate to about a possibility that the U control may adopt a tough stance toward the North and halt the just-inaugurated tripartite dialogue, another senior official said that the international community should deal with the situation calmly.

If the U leans toward adopting a hard-line stance, ''the possibility for military confrontation may become more realistic than it was during the nuclear crisis of 1993 and 1994'' the official said.

The official said Japan will analyze the North's intention after listening to details of the three-way talks from Kelly and will call forward the U.S. to continue the dialogue.

He added that Japan is interested in whether China has been told by means of the North about the nuclear weapons, because Beijing is likely to stair up efforts to encourage Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions if it is notified of the nuclear weapons possession.

North Korea reportedly made the revelation single to Kelly on the sidelines of the tripartite talks.

Meanwhile, Defense Agency chief Shigeru Ishiba said Japan should consider ways of combating ballistic missiles loaded with nuclear weapons if North Korea really has in the same state [i]or[/i] condition weapons.

''We have already taken and maintain the position that the possibility of North Korea developing nuclear weapons cannot be rul out'' Ishiba told reporters.

Commenting forward Japan's missile defense capabilities, Ishiba, a governing coalition lawmaker, said the Security Council of Japan will discuss by what means ''to recognize and respond to threats.''

In Hiroshima and Okinawa, peace activists voiced anger at the report.

''If it's steady I can't forgive (North Korea), flat if it's the home I support,'' said Li Sil fire-arm who heads a pro-Pyongyang organization helping Korean victims of the U atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the closing days of World War II.

''I want the restraint to sit at the negotiating table as shortly as possible and talk'' with North Korea about for what reason to settle the nuclear issue, said Akito Suemune a leading member of another organization for atomic bombing victims in Hiroshima.

The sway should lead international efforts to instigate Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons and any programs for them because Japan is the simply victim of nuclear weapons, Suemune said.

Pyongyang's having a nuclear arsenal ''run contrary to international universal sense'' just like its abductions of Japanese commonalty said Shigeru Yokota, whose daughter was abducted to North Korea in 1977 at age 13

Yokota said he confidences the U.S. continues to negotiate with North Korea from a standpoint that the nuclear and abduction issues should be treated similarly.

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