Resolution of the JCP 23rd Congress (Draft)
(2nd installment)

Part Three: Peace and Stability in East Asia -- For Resolving North Korea Question

(8) The JCP 22nd Congress Resolution took notice of "two decisive moves for peace" in East Asia, one in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the other on the Korean Peninsula.

In the last three years, the ASEAN has increased cooperation with many countries in Eurasia, including China, India, Russia, and European Union (EU) countries, in defending the international peace based on the U.N. Charter. It now plays an increasingly influential and important role as a powerful international source in the movement for peace and social progress.

Building on the development of the ASEAN, an effort is under way towards establishing a community covering the whole of East Asia, including Japan, China, and Korea, the biggest aim being to establish regional peace based on mutual respect for each other's identities and diversity, and help develop regional economic and cultural cooperation. It is important that the concept is designed to create an East Asian community based on the principle that it would (i) maintain friendship with the United States but without allowing its domination; (ii) not allow any country to establish hegemony; and (iii) call for Asian affairs to be dealt with by Asians.

Japan in the 21st century must join in this effort as an Asian country for peace and friendship and play an active role in developing economic relations that will enable every country to prosper together based on equality and reciprocity.

(9) With North Korea's nuclear weapons program becoming a major issue since October 2002, the situation on the Korean Peninsula is complicated and dangerous.

The resolution of the North Korea question is an essential task for peace and stability in East Asia.

This question is a powderkeg that could trigger a war in the region. If North Korea goes on developing nuclear weapons and continues with "brinkmanship" playing the "nuclear card", it will only give the United States a pretext for making a lawless preemptive attack. No one can deny that military confrontation may escalate into war and affect neighboring countries.

Should a war break out on the Korean Peninsula, it will cause hundreds of thousands of casualties. This is what the United States, a party concerned, has estimated. War must be prevented by all means from breaking out.

The international community must give top priority to making a concerted effort to eliminate all causes of war and avoid military clashes as its top priority task. The question of North Korea must be resolved by diplomatic and peaceful means, and it is important to thwart all moves leading to war.

In late August 2003, an important step forward was made at the six-party talks. Although major differences remained unsolved, the United States, North Korea, China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia shared the common view that they will do their utmost to peacefully resolve the Korean nuclear issue through dialogue and maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula in order to pave the way for a lasting peace on the peninsula. The JCP strongly hopes that this diplomatic process will continue and make progress toward the solution of the problem.

(10) Knowing that prospects of diplomatic negotiations are unpredictable, the JCP believes it important for the international community to work towards solving problems by standing firmly for the following principles:

(i) In solving the issue of nuclear weapons, it is important to develop diplomacy to convince North Korea with reason that its nuclear armament policy is most dangerous and that nothing is more important than abandoning its nuclear development and establishing stable diplomatic relations with the international community for the sake of its own national security.

The JCP has criticized the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for providing a regime that allows a few nuclear weapons-possessing countries to maintain their monopoly over nuclear weapons. We have done so in line with the demand that nuclear weapons be swiftly abolished throughout the world, and our criticism does not mean allowing more countries to have such weapons. On the contrary, whatever the reason, it is unacceptable for a country that declared that it would not have nuclear weapons as a party to the NPT to unilaterally announce its withdrawal from the treaty and embark on the road of nuclear weapons development. In addition, given the agreement North Korea has concluded with South Korea, the United States, and Japan to the effect that it will not seek to have nuclear weapons, its unilateral revocation is unacceptable.

The logic behind North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons development is that its national security can be secured only by maintaining "a tremendous military deterrent force". However, North Korea is isolating itself from the international community because of its pursuit of nuclear arms buildup based on the "deterrence" policy, thus exposing itself to great danger. If North Korea abandons this policy and accepts fair international inspections, it will prevent any country from inventing a pretext for attacking it.

(ii) North Korea's stable diplomatic relations with the international community can only be established when North Korea atones for its many lawless activities.

Although North Korea is a United Nations member and has diplomatic relations with many countries, these relations are far from being stable. The biggest obstacle to North Korea's stable external relations is its failure to atone for lawless acts it has done throughout the world, including the terror bomb explosion in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar), the shooting at a Japanese fishing boat, the KAL (Korean Air Lines) explosion, the trafficking in illicit drugs, and the abduction of Japanese nationals.

A successful solution to the abduction issue will be important not only for the abductees and their families, but for the settlement of all the lawless activities North Korea carried out throughout the world. The point is that North Korea has admitted some of the facts of kidnapping Japanese nationals and offered a formal apology, however imperfect. The need now is for North Korea to go farther than this first step toward settling all its lawless acts. This approach will make it possible to seek a solution to the abduction issue not just as a bilateral Japan-North Korea issue but as an international task to be tackled by the international community.

The international community should remind North Korea with reason that it can establish stable diplomatic relations with its neighboring countries and the rest of the world and join the international community in the true sense of the words only when it atones for its international lawless acts and that that is the main assurance of peace and security.

(iii) It is important for all the parties concerned to seek to stop the vicious circle of military responses.

The U.S. Bush administration is militarily intimidating North Korea as part of its so-called "axis of evil" stating it may be a target of its preemptive attack strategy. No country has the right to make preemptive attacks on any country whatsoever. North Korea, by playing its nuclear card, only increases the threat to peace. This cycle of military confrontation gives rise to a more dangerous situation.

Both the United States and North Korea should restrain themselves from taking any action that would heighten the cycle of military confrontation. All the countries concerned, including Japan, are called upon to work to prevent the United States and North Korea from pursuing military confrontational approaches instead of promoting them.

In this respect, it is important to note that the announcement made after the six-party talks pointed out that "all the parties should refrain from stating or acting in a manner that gives rise to turmoil in the course of peace talks," and that "all the parties concerned called for the Korean Peninsula to be made nuclear-free and recognized the need to explore a solution by taking into account North Korea's security and other concerns." It is necessary for all the parties concerned, including North Korea, to stand for and comply with the principles of national sovereignty and non-violation of each other's territory.

(11) Firmly standing for sovereign independence, the JCP has played the leading role in severely criticizing Korea's activities that have nothing in common with socialism, including its attempt in the late 1960s to invade the South; the imposition of the personality cult of Kim Il Sung in the 1970s; and a number of international lawless acts in the 1980s.

As North Korea has become an issue crucial to peace and stability in East Asia in the last several years, the JCP has been active in making specific proposals for solving problems with reason, including opening a negotiating channel between the government of Japan and North Korea and seeking to comprehensively solve the issues of nuclear weapons, the abduction of Japanese nationals, and Japan's colonization of Korea.

A reasonable solution to the North Korea problem could pave the way for peace, prosperity, and friendship in East Asia. For the Japanese people, it could mean making progress toward a peaceful environment, in which forces for the revival of militarism would lose their cause. At home and internationally, the JCP will continue to strive for reason to prevail in the effort to solve the issue of North Korea.


Part Four: JCP' Opposition Party Diplomacy

(12) The JCP's opposition party diplomacy has made remarkable progress for these several years since the JCP 21st Congress in 1997 adopted a policy that places emphasis on relations with other Asian countries. The normalization of JCP relations with the Communist Party of China and their summit meeting in 1998 laid the groundwork for the implementation of this policy. In developing the opposition party diplomacy, the 4th Central Committee Plenum in June, 1999, adopted landmark guidelines. The guidelines enable the JCP to be active in developing relations with other political parties, ruling or opposition, beyond the past framework of relations between communist parties, and with any foreign governments, based on mutual interest in opening political exchanges in the cause of world peace and social progress.

JCP activities under these guidelines began with a tour of Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Hong Kong), followed by a tour of Middle Eastern countries (Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates), South Asian countries (India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan), and Tunisia in Northern Africa. These visits greatly increased the JCP's relations with foreign governments and governing parties. JCP representatives participated in the Second International Conference of Asian Political Parties in Thailand, the Non-aligned Summit in Malaysia, and the First East Asian Conference (also in Malaysia), either as delegates or as guests.

At the time when war on Iraq was imminent, JCP representatives visited China, the Middle East, and South Asia, and confirmed its agreement with those governments on the need to make efforts to achieve a peaceful solution to the crisis. The JCP also conveyed to embassies in Japan its views on the Iraq question at each turning point. The JCP's opposition party diplomacy has thus paved the way for its increased effort to directly influence international politics. Through these firsthand interchanges, the JCP has been able to more comprehensively understand the present-day world.

Furthermore, these activities have provided us with an opportunity to take a fresh look at problems in Japan's politics and foreign policy. Every country the JCP visited is engaging in building its country on its own, despite the difficulties and contradictions they face, to achieve their independent goals for the 21st century. By contrast, Japan, bound by diplomacy subservient to the United States, remains without goals or prospects in its own self reliance.

(13) The opposition party diplomacy of the JCP is accepted in every corner of the world because the JCP works in the 21st century standing for an "universal axiom" being shared by a majority of the world's countries. In its opposition party diplomacy, the following theories and political views the JCP established have been very effective:

- Defend the world order of peace based on the U.N. Charter -- In an effort to win a broader international agreement in opposition to the Iraq war, the JCP has emphasized the importance of exploring cooperation in opposition to acts that destroy the world peace based on the U.N. Charter. Keeping this approach in mind, the JCP's opposition party diplomacy proved that many governments throughout the world could share common views with us.

- Strive for an equitable and democratic international economic order -- The JCP 22nd Congress Resolution rejected a simple "anti-globalization" slogan and adopted a policy of demanding a fair and democratic globalization which guarantees every country economic sovereignty in opposition to profit-first globalization centering around U.S.-led multinational corporations and international finance capital. This policy has proven to be effective in dialogues the JCP has had with governments of developing countries because it specifically concerns problems facing them.

- Promote coexistence and dialogue between cultures with different values -- The JCP's opposition party diplomacy has paved the way for exchanges with many of the governments in the Islamic world. Our position of seeking coexistence and dialogue between cultures with different values has played a key role in bringing us to heart-to-heart discussions with them. Given the prevailing tendency to consider a particular value as an absolute and impose it on the whole world, it is significant to hold fast to the position of respecting Islam's inner logic of social development and its pursuit of democracy and social development and of promoting dialogue and coexistence with the Islamic world.

(14) Through its opposition party diplomacy, the JCP has found that the "anti-communist walls" have been brought down everywhere. For example, the JCP has expanded exchanges with many Islamic countries in which communist parties are banned or do not exist. JCP delegations have visited these countries and succeeded in establishing close relations with them.

How is it possible for the JCP to build reliable and interactive relations with these and many other countries? There may be various factors. Discussions the JCP has had with many countries convince us that the JCP's history, in particular its consistent opposition to the war of aggression by Japanese militarism and defense of sovereign independence against great-power chauvinism by any country, is the source of trust in the JCP. We are very proud that the JCP's political line and history are becoming more effective in the present-day world.

In our discussions with different people around the world, many show their surprise when they know that the JCP has a membership of more than 400,000 working in 25,000 branches, an Akahata readership of nearly 2 million, 40 seats in the Houses of Representatives and Councilors and about 4,200 JCP members in local assemblies throughout Japan, and that the JCP is closely connected with the public in its grassroots activities. Indeed, the JCP's diplomacy is supported by this grassroots strength of the JCP.

The JCP's diplomatic activities will increase in the future. In this area, the JCP will further develop party activities to achieve greater results. (To be continued)