Monday's meeting at the Palace Hotel in Tokyo was attended by some 40 lawmakers from the four countries and about 500 rights activists. "Relief like food to the North must be given with a view to respecting and improving human rights in North Korea,” Chairman Hwang Woo-yeo said. “The North Korean human rights issue must naturally be included in the six-party talks." Kim Young-sun, a lawmaker from South Korea’s Grand National Party agreed, saying six-party talks without mention of freedom and human rights are “nothing more than support for a dictatorship.” “It's important that aid to North Korea happens according to progress in freedom and human rights," he said.

U.S. Republican lawmaker Edward R. Royce said North Korea was one of the world's darkest dictatorships and urged parliamentarians to take ideas presented by NGOs at the meeting and turn them into policy.

Mongolian lawmaker Lamjav Gundalai said Mongolia recognized that refugees from the Stalinist country cannot be treated as illegal migrants. He said his country was planning to establish an international farm where North Koreans can come and work.

The group adopted a declaration calling for efforts to pass North Korean human rights acts in South Korea and Japan, parliamentary resolutions to promote the development of human rights in North Korea, a fact-finding team to inspect the Sino-Korean border region, and the joint handling of the issue of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s.

The event was attended by nine South Korean parliamentarians, eight from the GNP including Kim Moon-soo and Uri Party Rep. Kim Sun-mi. Six Republican Party lawmakers, including Royce, were in attendance, as were 21 Japanese ruling and opposition lawmakers including former Democratic Party of Japan chairman Yukio Hatoyama and Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Yutaka Kobayashi, and four from Mongolia.

(englishnews@chosun.com )