TOKYO, Sept 29 (AFP) - Japan plans to delay a second shipment of food aid to North Korea because of slow progress in the North's investigation into its past abductions of Japanese, a newspaper said Wednesday.
Japan agreed in August to resume food aid to the impoverished Stalinist state for the first time in nearly four years. It offered to send a total of 250,000 tons via an international body over an unspecified period.
Half the total amount is on its way. But the government has decided to delay for the time being the second instalment that was originally due to be delivered by the end of March 2005, the Tokyo Shimbun said without naming sources.
The government "has judged it would trigger criticism from the relatives of the kidnapped people and the public if it decided on further aid in the face of no progress in revealing their fate," it said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told reporters that the schedule for the second tranche had not been fixed yet.
Japanese officials returned almost empty-handed from weekend working-level talks with their North Korean counterparts in Beijing.
North Korea has only disclosed partial information about 10 Japanese whom Tokyo says were abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. These are in addition to five other abductees who were repatriated to Japan in 2002.
North Korea initially claimed that eight of them are were dead and that two others never entered the country. But it promised a fresh investigation in May when the two nations held a second summit in Pyongyang.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the May summit offered 250,000 tons of food aid and 10 million dollars worth of medical supplies.
Outraged by the lack of progress in the North Korean probe, the families of the 10 people have called on Tokyo to impose economic sanctions on the North.
New Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said Monday that economic sanctions would be an option.