By RIA Novosti
Tokyo : Japan urges North Korea to provide full information on its nuclear activities to enable six-party agreements to be implemented, Kyodo news agency quoted a top government official as saying on Tuesday.
Under an agreement reached last October between the United States, Japan, Russia, China, and North and South Koreas, Pyongyang was to provide complete information on its nuclear programs by the end of 2007 in exchange for economic and political concessions. However, the North missed the deadline, causing the six-way negotiations to stall.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, speaking two days before a U.S. diplomat’s visit to North Korea for denuclearization talks, told journalists: “It is clear that to move the North Korean process forward, the necessary measures must be taken to dismantle all nuclear objects on the Korean peninsula.”
U.S. State Department Korean Affairs Director Sung Kim left for South Korea earlier on Tuesday, and will visit Beijing before traveling to North Korea to persuade the country’s regime to meet its nuclear obligations and fully disable its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.
Since the October deal, South Korea, China and Russia have each supplied North Korea with 50,000 metric tons of fuel oil.
Pyongyang earlier accused the U.S. of failing to strike it off the list of states sponsoring terrorism and lift related trade restrictions, Washington’s obligations under the six-party deal in November 2006.