AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
TOKYO: China on Wednesday criticized Tokyo for accusing North Korea of lying about a Japanese kidnap victim as envoys from six nations were trying to get Pyongyang back to the nuclear talks.
“I think it was a coincidence, but Japan could have delayed the timing,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, the chief delegate to the talks from Pyongyang's main ally, told reporters.
Japan announced Tuesday that DNA tests showed a man who married and fathered a child of a Japanese woman was likely a South Korean who was also kidnapped — not a North Korean as Pyongyang says.
The victim, Megumi Yokota, is an emblematic figure of Japanese kidnapped by Pyongyang because she was snatched when she was a 13-year-old schoolgirl.
The Japanese chief negotiator revealed the DNA results to a North Korean envoy who was on a rare visit to Tokyo for a private conference among the six nations in the suspended dialogue on the North's nuclear ambitions.
The closed-door forum, organized by the University of California, made little apparent headway, with the North demanding a lifting of US financial sanctions before returning to formal negotiations.
North Korea has admitted kidnapping Japanese civilians to train spies and handed over five victims and their families to Japan in 2002 in return for promises of economic aid and talks to normalize relations.
Japan believes at least eight more of its citizens are alive and kept under wraps in North Korea because they know secrets.
