RUSSIAN MINISTER SAYS HE HAS 'NO DOUBTS' ABOUT NORTH KOREA

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow on July 10 that he "wouldn't make any complaints" about North Korea's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Interfax reported. He called on the other participants in the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program "to strictly abide by our joint plan of seeking a settlement and not to bring into it issues relating to the bilateral relations of any of the states with Pyongyang." Radio Japan, which is the international service of Japanese national broadcaster NHK, said on July 11 that Lavrov was alluding to Japan's policy of pressing North Korea to provide full information on the fate of at least 13 Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s to train North Korean agents in the Japanese language and customs. Pyongyang has provided some information, but Tokyo considers its response inadequate. Lavrov stressed on July 10 that he has "heard no complaints that Pyongyang is failing to meet its commitments" to the IAEA. He added, "I don't think that at this moment we should have any suspicions, or any complacency for that matter." He described as "interesting" a recent EU proposal to deploy an international peacekeeping force in the Palestinian territories. Lavrov said that "we will study the [EU's] ideas with interest, but...we want to know in more specific terms [if the proposal is more than] a slogan and how it is meant to be put into practice and what it implies." PM