Submitted by admin on Sun, 2007-04-01 08:00. ::
JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, April 1 (Yonhap) -- Two days of talks between South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soong and his Japanese counterpart came to an end here Sunday as the two apparently failed to narrow differences on issues that were threatening to strain ties between their countries.
The first meeting between the two since December came amid a renewed dispute over Tokyo's role in forcing thousands of Korean women into brothels operated by the Japanese military during World War II.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reignited the decades-old debate as he claimed early last month that the Tokyo government had little to do with the military brothels, and thus it was not obliged to apologize to the women who were not coerced, according to Abe, into sexual slavery.
The Japanese foreign minister reaffirmed that Tokyo stands by the Kono statement, but offered little guarantee such a dispute would not arise again, according to officials.
Historians believe as many as 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China but also from other Asian nations including Thailand, Malysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, were forced to work as sex slaves, often known by the euphemism "comfort women."
Many South Koreans believe Japan has yet to sincerely atone for its war atrocities despite the 1993 Kono statement, while the frequent recurrence of disputes over the comfort women issue originating from Japan supports that belief.
The foreign ministers, however, were able to find common ground on many issues, including ways to increase exchanges and cooperation between their countries and bring an early end to the dispute over North Korea's nuclear weapons program, officials from both sides said.
The two agreed to hold high-level security talks in May and will work to hold various dialogues in the near future, according to Kim Jae-shin, a Foreign Ministry official in charge of Northeast Asian affairs.
Tokyo also promised to invite to Japan 1,000 South Korean students a year for the next five years on a youth exchange program to help increase understanding and exchanges between the countries' youth, Mitsuo Sakaba, a press secretary for the Japanese Foreign Ministry, told reporters Saturday.
Aso stressed the need to resume negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and Japan, but the South Korean minister said it was important to first lay the groundwork for a high-level agreement, according to Kim.
The countries held six rounds of FTA negotiations since December 2003, but the talks came to an abrupt halt in November 2004 as the sides were unable to narrow gaps on various trade issues.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has been widely anticipated to visit Tokyo early this year for a summit with the Japanese prime minister as the two last met in Seoul in October, but both South Korean and Japanese officials said the issue never came up during the course of the two-day ministerial talks here.
Instead, the sides agreed on the need to hold at the earliest date possible a meeting of foreign ministers from six nations involved in international negotiations on ending North Korea's nuclear ambition, their officials said.
Under a deal struck in Beijing on Feb. 13, North Korea agreed to shut down and seal its key nuclear facilities within 60 days in exchange for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. It then has to permanently disable the nuclear facilities and declare a complete list of all of its nuclear programs for an additional 950,000 tons of oil or equivalent aid.
"Mr. Song Min-soon said once those initial stage measures are taken as agreed upon before April 14, a ministerial meeting of the six parties should be arranged so that next stage measures can be discussed at the political level," the Japanese press official, Sakaba, said while meeting with South Korean journalists.
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