At the 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council, a Japanese vice-foreign minister said that the "international community is still concerned about the human rights situation in north Korea as well as abducted Japanese", calling for the "international support for the settlement of the abduction issue".

It is highly ridiculous to see the shamelessness of insular political swindlers keen on foolish acts to cover up the blood-stained past crimes.

As known all over the world, the abduction issue much touted by Japan is the one settled long ago.

Nonetheless, the Abe group has persistently used the abduction issue for its sinister purposes like the retaining of power and win at election, asserting that "the abduction issue should not be curtained off".

In the final analysis, the Japanese reactionaries' human rights racket is no more than a big fraudulent farce that has been staged whenever they face political crisis.

Now, the Abe group is confronted with strong demand of the international community to liquidate without delay the crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists in the past.

The international pressure upon the Abe group grows stronger with each passing day along with the atmosphere of peace and stability being settled in the region by the initiative efforts of the DPRK.

Such atmosphere comes to be a really big challenge to the Japanese ruling quarters cherishing a sinister intention to realize the old dream of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" through the moves for militarization and a military giant.

The Abe clique, quite upset by the atmosphere, is working hard to get rid of the historical responsibility and obligation by setting the issue of settlement of Japan's past against the abduction issue, its old favourite trick.

However, it is a mere daydream.

It is ludicrous for the Abe group to try to calm down the exasperated anti-Japanese sentiment of the international community with the already worn-out abduction issue and thus gloss over Japan's past woven with inhumane crimes. It is as foolish an act as covering up the dirty body with a piece of rag.

The decisions made at the international military tribunals after the Second World War and the rules on war crimes specified in a report adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Sub-committee in August, 1999, clearly prove that Japan's past crimes are, indeed, the heinous crimes beyond the statute of limitations that deserve severe punishment.

Whatever tricks Japan resorts to, it can never evade its responsibility for the past crimes.

Japan is well advised to refrain from adding crimes to its past crimes by raising a hue and cry over the abduction issue that makes a mockery of the international community and sincerely discharge the legal and moral obligation it assumed before the Korean nation and mankind.

Explicitly speaking, sincere apology and proper reparations for unethical crimes are the only thing that Japan, a war criminal state, should do.

KCNA