By Kiyoshi Takenaka
BEIJING (Reuters) - Japan urged China on Monday to shoulder a big role in ensuring that North Korea avoids volatile moves despite uncertainties created by the death of Pyongyang's leader, Kim Jong-il.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda also nudged Chinese President Hu Jintao to share information about developments in North Korea, where the succession of Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, has fanned speculation about who will really control the secretive one-party state and its nuclear weapons programme.
"It is important that we will not let the death of the Chairman of the National Defence Commission Kim have a negative impact on the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula," Noda was quoted by a Japanese official as telling Hu in Beijing.
Kim Jong-il's many titles included head of the military.
"Under these circumstance, the role of China, which is the chair country of the six-party talks and has a big influence on North Korea, is extremely important," said Noda, according to the official who brief reporters on condition that he remained anonymous.
The Japanese prime minister was the first regional leader to visit Beijing since Kim Jong-il's death was announced a week ago, putting Kim Jong-un in formal charge of North Korea, which has long relied on China for diplomatic and economic support.
China has also sought to defuse confrontation by hosting six-party nuclear disarmament talks since August 2003. The now-stalled negotiations bring together North and South Korea, China, the United States, Japan and Russia.
Noda also urged China to be forthcoming about what it learns about the North's transition -- something Beijing, with its intensively secretive relationship with Pyongyang, appears unlikely to do.
"I would like vigorous information sharing between Japan and China, and intend to address the situation calmly and properly," Noda was quoted as telling Hu on the second and final day of his visit to the Chinese capital.
Pyongyang has alarmed the region with two plutonium-based nuclear test blasts, a succession of military altercations, and declarations that it is developing uranium enrichment, which could open another path to assembling atomic weapons.
Constraining North Korea is especially important for Japan, which lies within range of the North's long-range missiles and wants Pyongyang to resolve the visceral issue of the fate of Japanese citizens kidnapped to help train spies decades ago.
In April 2009, North Korea said it was quitting the six-party talks and reversing nuclear "disablement" steps, unhappy with implementation of an initial disarmament deal.
But Beijing is acutely wary of upsetting North Korea, especially during the current delicate transition, and has restricted its public comments about the implications of Kim's death to broad calls for stability and calm.
"Both sides agreed that preserving the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula serves the interests of all sides," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in its account of talks on Sunday between Noda and Premier Wen Jiabao.
The Chinese media did not immediately offer Beijing's account of Hu's meeting with Noda.
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)
