U.S. President George W. Bush promised Saturday to ask his successor Barack Obama to press on with a slow-moving drive to end North Korea’s nuclear program, Japan’s prime minister said.
With two months left in office, Bush has held out hope of a late diplomatic triumph on North Korea, a country he once branded as part of an "axis of evil" but has since offered aid and other incentives to disarm.
Bush discussed North Korea during his first summit with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, who took office in September, and a three-way meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak at a regional forum in Peru.
Bush reassured staunch ally Japan on the emotionally charged issue of the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.
Bush said he believed "that Japan thinks the abduction issue is just as grave as the nuclear issue and he said that he shared that view," Aso told reporters.
"He said he will certainly hand over the two issues to the next administration," Aso said. Bush last month removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, saying Pyongyang had agreed to steps to show its denuclearization under a six-nation aid-for-disarmament pact.
But nations involved in six-party talks — China, Japan, the United States, Russia, and the two Koreas — have yet to endorse a plan for the hardline communist state to fully verify its nuclear record.
Both US and Japanese officials said the next round of six-way talks may take place in early December.