Japan to Postpone Talks with North Korea

Japan will postpone talks with North Korea after it announced plans to launch a rocket later this month, Kyodo news agency said Saturday, days before diplomats from the two countries were due to meet.

North Korea will launch a rocket between December 10 and 22, said official Korean Central News Agency earlier on Saturday, in what will be the country's second long-range rocket launch this year following a much-hyped but failed attempt in April.

Senior Japanese and North Korean diplomats had been due to meet in Beijing on December 5-6 following rare talks in Mongolia in mid-November, which had marked the first senior-level meeting between the two nations in four years.

Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda decided Saturday to postpone the bilateral talks in the face of North Korea's announcement of plans to launch an "earth observation satellite", said Kyodo.

Japanese Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto issued an order to the Self-Defense Forces to prepare for destroying North Korea's rocket if necessary in case of its launch, reported the agency.

"I have determined it will be difficult to hold the meeting from a comprehensive standpoint, and I informed the other party of my postponement decision," Kyoda quoted Noda as saying.

His comments came after a meeting of relevant ministers, attended by Morimoto, Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba and Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura convened to discuss how to deal with the issue, Kyodo said.

"It will be quite regrettable if the launch is carried out. The international society, including Japan, will have to respond to it in a decisive manner," Kyodo reported Noda as saying.

Japan said it would work closely with the United States, South Korea and China to dissuade North Korea from going ahead with the launch, Jiji Press news agency had earlier reported, quoting government officials.

Japan and North Korea do not have diplomatic ties and have long been at odds, with Tokyo pressing Pyongyang to come clean over past abductions of Japanese nationals and its nuclear ambitions.

In 2002 Pyongyang admitted its agents had kidnapped Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese language and customs.

North Korea maintains Japan has not made up for its wartime aggression and demands compensation and atonement.