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Japan Cabinet to OK N. Korea sanctions By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer
57 minutes ago



TOKYO - Japan's Cabinet will approve a new set of financial sanctions against North Korea on Tuesday in response to the communist nation's missile firing in July, a top government official said.

The sanctions — called for in a U.N. Security Council resolution that denounced the missile launches — would ban withdrawals of money and overseas remittances by groups and individuals suspected of links to North Korean weapons programs.

"As it has become obvious that the problem cannot be resolved only through dialogue, pressure is unavoidable," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said Monday on NTV network. "In order to get them to change their behavior, we cannot help but apply the pressure."

The planned sanctions include measures targeting 12 groups and an individual that officials say have links to North Korea's weapons development programs, according to Japanese media reports.

Tokyo stepped up trade restrictions on North Korea in July following Pyongyang's test-firing of seven missiles, including one long-range rocket, into the waters between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The launches drew international condemnation.

Communist North Korea's moribund economy is heavily dependent on cash infusions from a large community of sympathetic ethnic Koreans in Japan.

Japan and North Korea have no diplomatic relations, but the two have maintained limited economic ties. Following the latest sanctions, trade between the two plunged nearly 40 percent, the government recently announced.

The United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have tried to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear program at six-party negotiations that have been on hold since November 2005 because North Korea refuses to attend until Washington lifts financial restrictions.

Abe said Monday it was also necessary to increase pressure on North Korea over its past abductions of Japanese citizens. Pyongyang, which has admitted kidnapping Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s to train as spies, allowed five of them to return home but said others were dead.

Many Japanese believe the missing are alive.

Abe, the nationalist leading the race to replace outgoing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, said he planned to create a new Cabinet post in charge of the abduction issue if he wins.