Al Jazeera :
North Korea has claimed that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida requested a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but said any meeting was unlikely without a policy shift by Tokyo.
There was no immediate comment from Japan’s government on Monday.
In the statement carried by state media, Kim’s sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, said Kishida used “another channel” to convey his position that he wants to meet the North Korean leader in person at an early date.
Kim Yo Jong said there would be no breakthrough in North Korea-Japan relations as long as Kishida’s government raises the issue of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea in past decades and opposes what she described as the North’s “exercise of sovereign rights,” apparently referring to Pyongyang’s weapons testing activities.
“If Japan continues to try to interfere with our exercise of our sovereign rights, and continues to be preoccupied with the abduction issue, of which there is nothing more to resolve or investigate, then the prime minister’s [offer for talks] will inevitably be labelled as just an attempt to improve his popularity,” she said.
