Japan Pledges It Would Enforce Key U.N. Sanctions Against N. Korea : Diplomacy: Tokyo says for first time that it will restrict travel, remittances if Security Council OKs punitive measures. Meanwhile, U.S. toughens its proposal.

Japan will do its part to enforce key parts of international sanctions against North Korea, the Foreign Ministry publicly affirmed for the first time Tuesday, even as the United States toughened its proposals for punitive measures in response to Pyongyang’s withdrawal from a worldwide nuclear monitoring agency.

The ministry said the Japanese would restrict travel to and from North Korea and ban Koreans here from sending millions of dollars in hard currency to Pyongyang, if the two measures are required in sanctions that must be approved by the U.N. Security Council.

Noting that the U.N. Charter makes decisions by the international body “legally binding” on member states, ministry spokesman Terusuke Terada said “we have to accept measures adopted by the Security Council, and we will implement them.”

Of all the sanctions that Japan could enforce against Pyongyang over its refusal to allow international inspections of its nuclear facilities, travel and remittances by Koreans here of an estimated $600 million are the most important and most politically sensitive. About 200,000 Korean residents of Japan are sympathetic to North Korea.

Although Japanese leaders and diplomats have hinted that Japan would enforce the travel and remittance bans as part of U.N. sanctions, Terada’s remarks were the first made for the record.

He made them in indirect reply to comments earlier Tuesday by Ichiro Ozawa, chief strategist of the minority coalition of Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata. Ozawa told foreign correspondents that he feared the government might fail to act on the two issues.

In other developments Tuesday:

* Jimmy Carter met in Seoul with South Korean President Kim Young Sam, amid signs that the former U.S. President’s visit to North Korea today could prove important in resolving the growing dispute with Pyongyang. Although American officials have insisted Carter is traveling as a private citizen, diplomats have suggested that he may be serving as a go-between, outlining U.S. conditions for resuming high-level talks to improve diplomatic relations between Pyongyang and Washington.

* South Korea, apparently beginning to feel pressure as the war talk escalates, tempered its own rhetoric and played down the importance of a nationwide civil defense exercise that it had ballyhooed earlier as a show of resolve. North Korea’s announcement Monday that it was pulling out of the International Atomic Energy Agency sparked a selling wave on the Seoul stock exchange, resulting in the biggest one-day fall in four months and sending ripples nationwide.

In Tokyo, Ozawa and the Foreign Ministry engaged in a running debate on Japan’s possible role in the North Korean sanctions.

“Japanese public opinion will be influenced by a U.N. resolution, but if there is no conflict occurring at the time, it would be difficult” to impose bans on travel and remittances, Ozawa said. He said Japan was even less likely to act if the Security Council failed to approve a resolution against North Korea.

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“Accustomed to peace” and lulled into believing “the United States and other countries will protect our peace,” the Japanese, he said, don’t feel a sense of crisis. Bureaucrats, politicians, business people, bankers and ordinary people “are still very hopeful and optimistic, still in a mood of peace.”

“If asked by the United States to join sanctions without a U.N. resolution, I am very worried” about whether Japan could enforce the measures, he said. “I am deeply afraid . . . that the international community will lose trust in Japan.”

Terada said nothing about what Japan might do if the United Nations failed to act against North Korea and Washington sought a separate “alliance of the willing”--its allies and others--to act against Pyongyang. At the moment, “we are not doing anything outside the U.N. framework,” he said.

Ozawa said he personally believes that Japan--which now enjoys protection with an American “nuclear umbrella” under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty--must cooperate fully with the United States and South Korea.

But he criticized American officials and commentators, saying they should not try to justify U.S. action in the region by suggesting that Japan might seek to arm itself with nuclear weapons in response to North Korea’s building the bomb.

“Japan would obtain not a single benefit from arming itself with nuclear weapons,” he said. “Japan would be viewed with suspicion by all the world. And with nuclear weapons, would Japan be able to ensure its security? Not at all.

“The only nation, while maintaining a high level of living standards, that can guarantee its own security by itself is the United States,” he asserted. “Other countries can’t. Therefore, the others must cooperate with the United States and other countries to maintain one another’s security. That is the only way.”

In Washington on Tuesday, U.S. officials said they will toughen their proposed North Korean sanctions in response to Pyongyang’s announcement Monday that it is withdrawing from the IAEA, the 120-country organization that oversees international nuclear weapons inspections.

Clinton approved a draft resolution Tuesday that included the new language calling for “phased” sanctions against North Korea. The restrictions would be tightened more quickly if Pyongyang takes any further steps to defy the West over its nuclear arms program.

The President’s signing off on the proposed sanctions paved the way for U.S. officials to circulate them to other Security Council members in preparation for a formal vote, possibly by month’s end.

North Korea formally notified the IAEA of its withdrawal Tuesday--ironically, by officially informing the United States, which holds legal status as the repository for communications with the Vienna-based organization.

Officials said the message from Pyongyang raised questions about whether two IAEA inspectors still at North Korea’s nuclear reactor are needed there anymore. Pyongyang has said it plans to expel the two, but U.S. officials said they were still there late Tuesday.

As part of the diplomatic efforts to win support for the sanctions, Clinton also spoke by telephone with Hata, thanking him “for the way Japan has handled the North Korean matter,” Terada said.

Hata, he added, “clearly” told Clinton that Japan “would act responsibly within the bounds of its constitution,” if the Security Council adopts North Korean sanctions.

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On Monday, Hata told Parliament that the constitution, which forbids Tokyo from employing force in settling international disputes, would prevent Japan from joining any military sanctions.

Other Japanese diplomats, who have supported banning remittances, have declared flatly that stopping the money flow would be impossible--politically--without international approval. Among all economic sanctions mentioned as possibilities, only a halt of Chinese oil and food supplies would hurt North Korea more than the loss of hard currency from Japan.

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Jameson reported from Tokyo and Pine from Washington.