(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday the government has decided to lift part of its sanctions against North Korea in return for the launch of Pyongyang's panel to reinvestigate the fate of Japanese citizens abducted by its agents decades ago
"We have concluded that North Korea has established an unprecedented system centering on the National Defense Commission and the Ministry of State Security, which can make national decisions to investigate all Japanese nationals involved," Abe told reporters after a meeting of Cabinet ministers involved in the abduction issue
"Based on the principle of action for action, Japan will lift some of the sanctions on North Korea," the premier said. "But this is just a start. We are determined to make every effort to achieve a complete resolution of this issue." Japan unilaterally imposed the sanctions in October 2006 following North Korea's first nuclear test and test-launch of ballistic missiles over the Sea of Japan the same year
Speaking at a news conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the formal decision will be made at a Cabinet meeting Friday, when North Korea will set up the investigation committee in Pyongyang
The top government spokesman also said Japan expects the North to make a first report of the probes into the abduction issue sometime from late summer to early autumn
The government plans to lift restrictions on travel between the countries, an obligation to report on remittance to North Korea, and a ban on entry into Japanese ports of North Korean-registered ships for humanitarian purposes
On Tuesday, government officials from Japan and North Korea discussed in Beijing specifics of Pyongyang's promised establishment of the investigation panel that will look into the fate of Japanese who were abducted by North Korea to train its spy agents in language and customs in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as other Japanese missing in the North
The Beijing meeting came after the two countries reached an agreement late May, in which Japan said it will lift some of the sanctions it has unilaterally imposed on North Korea once Pyongyang sets up such a committee and starts a "comprehensive and full-scale survey" of all abducted Japanese citizens as well as missing Japanese who may have been taken
The abduction issue has prevented Tokyo and Pyongyang from normalizing relations
The two countries have been deadlocked over the number of abducted Japanese nationals and the fates of some of them. In 2002, North Korea admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese and returned five victims and their families, claiming that the other eight victims were dead. But Japan has demanded proof of their deaths and believes 17 people were kidnapped. The North agreed in 2008 to reinvestigate the abduction cases, but has failed to fulfill its promise
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