UNGA SPEECH
Japan PM open to summit with N Korean leader
Abe appeals to Kim to show his own readiness
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a longtime hardliner on North Korea, said Tuesday he was willing to meet Kim Jong Un after the once reclusive leader's historic summit with US President Donald Trump.
Abe, who one year ago warned at the United Nations that the window for diplomacy with North Korea was closing, took a more open but still cautious tone in his latest address to the world body.
But he said that any summit would be devoted to resolving a decades-old row over North Korea's abductions of Japanese civilians -- a deeply emotive issue for much of the Japanese public on which Abe built his political career.
"In order to resolve the abduction issue, I am also ready to break the shell of mutual distrust with North Korea, get off to a new start and meet face to face with Chairman Kim Jong Un," Abe said in his UN address.
"But if we are to have one, then I am determined that it must contribute to the resolution of the abduction issue."
He stressed that no summit was yet in the works -- and appealed to Kim to show his own readiness.
"North Korea is now at a crossroads at which it will either seize or fail to seize the historic opportunity it was afforded," Abe said. North Korea kidnapped scores of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train the regime's spies in Japanese language and culture.
Speculation has been rising that Abe could meet with Kim, who reportedly told Trump during their summit in June in Singapore that he was willing to talk to arch-enemy Japan.