North Korea said on Saturday that Japan should not bother to attend six-country talks on ending its nuclear weapons programme because it was just a territory of the United States. Pyongyang agreed on Tuesday to return to the talks involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the United States after staying away for a year in protest over a US crackdown on its international finances. Talks are expected to resume in the next month. “It would be much better for Japan to refrain from participating in the six-party talks and less attendants would be not bad for making the talks fruitful,” a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by KCNA news agency. “It is the view of the DPRK that since the US attends the six-party talks, there is no need for Japan to participate in them as a local delegate because it is no more than a state of the US and it is enough for Tokyo just to be informed of the results of the talks by Washington.”