WASHINGTON (AFP) ? Japanese lawmakers on Thursday urged US pressure on North Korea in a row over kidnappings and voiced confidence that Washington would reject the communist state's requests for emergency food.
A Japanese delegation held three days of talks in Washington to raise the profile of the kidnapping dispute. Japan suspects that North Korea is holding at least 13 of its nationals abducted in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies.
Jin Matsubara, a member of parliament from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, said the group asked senior US officials and lawmakers not to provide food to North Korea, amid reports of widespread hunger.
"I strongly stressed to the State Department that no matter what monitoring process is secured to provide assistance, the food will never reach the people in need," Matsubara told a news conference.
"We believe that, based on the recognition that the food assistance would never reach the people in North Korea, they oppose the idea of providing assistance," he said.
The European Union recently said it would provide emergency aid to feed 650,000 people in North Korea. US relief groups which visited earlier this year said that some North Koreans were so desperate they were eating grass.
The United States sent a team to assess North Korea's needs but has not announced a decision, saying it wants assurances that the food would not be diverted to the military or to national celebrations planned next year.
The House of Representatives, led by the Republican Party, has voted to ban any US food aid to North Korea. But in the Senate, John Kerry, a member of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party, has supported food aid on humanitarian grounds and said the step could help defuse persistent tensions.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, receiving Japan's then prime minister Junichiro Koizumi on a historic visit to Pyongyang in 2002, acknowledged 13 abductions -- an extraordinary admission after years of denial.
Kim allowed five of the Japanese to return home, declaring that the rest were dead and that the case was closed. But the issue instead became even more intense in Japan with politicians clamoring to take a tough stand against North Korea.
Japanese officials say that at least 17 people were kidnapped and believe that some are kept under wraps because they know secrets about one of the world's most reclusive regimes.
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