North Korea says it will ignore Japan at nuclear talks

North Korea said yesterday it would not recognise Japan at international nuclear talks starting next week, further straining ties that have already been damaged due to North Korean agents kidnapping Japanese decades ago.

Impoverished North Korea will meet five regional powers including Japan and the United States from tomorrow in Beijing for talks that will likely be the Bush administration's last chance to advance a sputtering disarmament-for-aid deal.

"We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it, even if it impudently appears in the conference room, lost to shame," the North's official KCNA news agency said quoting an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Japan has said it will not join China, Russia, South Korea and the United States in providing aid to North Korea unless the matter of its abductees has been solved, prompting Pyongyang to say that Japan should be removed from the six-country talks.

North Korea regularly criticises Japan in its official media for failing to pay what it sees as proper contrition for its 1910-1945 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.

US envoy Christopher Hill and seasoned North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan on Friday wrapped up two days of talks in Singapore trying to make progress in setting up a system to verify claims the North made about its nuclear programme.

Analysts said North Korea, sensing the Bush administration might be looking for a rare diplomatic success before leaving office in January, wants to squeeze last-minute concessions at the six-way meeting in Beijing.