Tokyo, March 10: North Korea today rejected a US demand that it expel members of the Japanese Red Army, a condition Washington has set for removing the Stalinist state from its list of ``state sponsors of terrorism''. The rejection is likely to complicate talks now going on among US and North Korean diplomats in New York ahead of the first visit to Washington by a high-level North Korean official.``The US unreasonably urges the DPRK (North Korea) not to permit their stay any longer. It is.a grave interference in the DPRK's internal affair,'' said a spokesman for North Korea's society for human rights studies.``As for those members of the Japanese `Red Army,' they are political exiles in the DPRK who fled from the Japanese authorities' harsh repression and persecution,'' he said in a statement carried by the official Korean central news agency.A senior US official said last week that terms for North Korea's removal from the US list of ``state sponsors of terrorism'' would be discussed in New York this week along with preparations for the official visit, which would be a landmark in the gradual process of ending Pyong Yang's isolation from the rest of the world.The State Department said North Korea must expel members of the Japanese Red Army and make a public denunciation of ``terrorism'' if it wants to be removed from the list.Nine Japanese Red Army faction members hijacked a Japan Airlines plane with 131 people and seven crew members aboard during a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka in western Japan in 1970.The passengers were released unhurt in Seoul, and the plane continued on to Pyongyang where the nine defected.Of the nine original hijackers, one died in Pyongyang and another was arrested in 1988 after secretly returning to Japan, where he was given a five-year prison sentence.Another Japanese Red Army member has been on trial in a Thai court after being arrested in 1996 for the attempted use of counterfeit US currency in Pattaya, Thailand.The six others have sought to return to Japan but Japanese authorities said they must stand trial.The statute of limitations does not apply for suspects who have fled the country.The Red Army faction that carried out the 1970 hijack is separate from that responsible for a series of bloody shootings and other incidents in the late 1970s, especially in West Asia.
