Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe welcomes the resumption of talks between Japan and North Korea and hopes to see fruitful results, he said in a recent interview.
With the talks scheduled to resume in Beijing on Wednesday after a four-year hiatus, Abe said the Japanese delegation should have a firm strategy in place to prevent it from being outmaneuvered by North Korea.
In 2002, Abe accompanied Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Pyongyang for ground-breaking talks with Kim Jong Il, who died last December and was succeeded by Kim Jong Un. Abe was deputy chief Cabinet secretary at the time of the Koizumi trip.