Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Wednesday that North Korea will receive from the government the remainder of the food aid it was promised.
Koizumi promised 250,000 tons of rice aid to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il during their summit in Pyongyang in May.
During a Diet debate with Koizumi on Wednesday, Katsuya Okada, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, said the remaining half of this aid should be put on hold.
"Not one Japanese was convinced" by the outcome of the six-day working-level talks in Pyongyang that ended Monday, Okada claimed.
During the discussions, Pyongyang reiterated that eight people it earlier admitted abducting to North Korea had died. It says it has no knowledge of an additional two whom Tokyo believes were also kidnapped.
"The food aid and (the results of the talks) are separate issues," Koizumi said. We "will supply (the food aid) through an international organization when (we) should."
Okada said, "It is totally out of the question" to resume talks on normalizing bilateral relations with Pyongyang. He urged Koizumi to say when he plans to make a decision on the matter.
Koizumi said only that the government should push Pyongyang harder to act in good faith before entering into normalization talks.
Okada also questioned the prime minister's earlier definition of a noncombat zone.
In a Diet session on Nov. 10, Koizumi said a "noncombat zone" in Iraq is any area in which the Self-Defense Forces are undertaking reconstruction work.
Under the special law allowing the SDF to be deployed to Iraq, troops can only be deployed to noncombat zones.
On Wednesday, Koizumi called his definition "appropriate" and "easy to understand."