Japan hopes summit helps disarm NKorea

TOKYO:  Japan on Tuesday voiced hope that a historic summit between the two Koreas will help to foster reconciliation and progress in multilateral talks on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.   

"We are hopeful that the summit, the first such a summit in the past seven years, will contribute to an easing of tensions in Northeast Asia," Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said.  "At the same time we are hopeful that the summit will contribute to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, as the six-party talks are in progress," added Machimura, the top government spokesman. 

South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun was personally welcomed by the North's reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il as he arrived on Tuesday in the capital Pyongyang, after earlier walking across the world's last Cold War frontier. Their summit is only the second since the peninsula was divided more than a half century ago.   

The summit comes amid an upbeat mood in six-nation negotiations over North Korea's nuclear disarmament. Envoys at the Beijing talks struck a provisional agreement on Sunday on the next phase of ending its atomic programmes. The provisional agreement will now go back to the governments for approval, and negotiators will resume their talks in Beijing in a few days so the deal can be sealed, the US and other envoys said.   

Machimura said Japan "is not completely satisfied with the agreement, but we recognise it as a step forward for the goal of denuclearising North Korea."