Press Availability with Director-General Sasae

Press Availability with Director-General Kenichiro Sasae

Christopher R. Hill, Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Tokyo, Japan July 13, 2007

(Note: Director-General Sasae spoke in Japanese, and his remarks are not included in this transcript.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Just to say that it’s a pleasure to be back here in the Foreign Ministry and to talk to my colleague, Director General Sasae, about our preparations for next week's meeting. Of course we discussed these initial actions and the follow-on actions and other aspects -- including, of course, bilateral approaches. And in that connection we discussed the abduction issue. So I think we will look forward to seeing the completion of these initial actions, something that we've worked very hard to achieve. And we want to use these initial actions as a means to create more momentum for the next actions, with the understanding that this entire process is aimed at a holistic approach that will deal with the complete denuclearization.

The Six-Party process is a pretty broad platform. Out of the Six-Party process, we hope to create a Northeast Asian mechanism, security forum, for example. And there will also be at some point some kind of peace process on the Korean Peninsula -- but this to go in parallel with the Six-Party process that would also continue, because it is essential that we get to our ultimate goal, which is the complete denuclearization.

QUESTION: Toward the completion of the second phase, you said that scheduling of the steps – with regard to that, how did the discussion go in today& rsquo;s discussion with Mr. Sasae?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Well, we talked about the fact that there are many elements that will need to be scheduled and will need to be worked on in the coming weeks. As I've said before, we lost a lot of time in the early part of this year, and now we have to do a lot in the second part of the year if we are to achieve our objectives for the end of the year. Where we would like to be at the end of the year is, of course, with the disabling of the Yongbyon facility. We'd like the complete declaration of nuclear programs. And then, on our side, in the six-party process we'll also be doing some compensation in terms of fuel oil. So there's just a lot to get done. We're also interested in a ministerial. We did have a discussion about how we might try to get all of this accomplished in the coming months. But it's a very ambitious agenda, I must say.

QUESTION: North Korea has proposed military talks.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: It was a press report today. I haven't had a chance really to look at it. I can tell you we have a very busy Six-Party agenda, and that's what we're trying to get accomplished today.

ENDS

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