Japan will extend by a year economic sanctions against North Korea, including a ban on imports, and tighten oversight of fund transfers to its secretive neighbor after a rocket launch, the government said yesterday.
Pyongyang said it had put a satellite into orbit but Tokyo, Seoul and Washington consider last Sunday’s launch a thinly disguised test of a long-range missile designed to carry a warhead as far as Alaska.
The US military has said no object entered orbit.
In a largely symbolic measure, Japan will extend existing sanctions for a year and require more money sent to the cash-strapped communist country to be reported to authorities.
Sanctions previously set for six months have been extended four times since they began in 2006, with Japan citing lack of progress in talks to denuclearize North Korea and to investigate Pyongyang’s past abduction of Japanese citizens.
“We have not seen a sincere response from North Korea on the issues of abductions, nuclear programs and missiles,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told a news conference. “We decided that additional measures were also needed, taking into consideration the overall situation after the missile launch.”
Japan’s unpopular government is under pressure to take a tough stance against North Korea after its rocket soared over Japan during its 3,200km flight.
Japan has called for a new, legally binding resolution by the UN Security Council to declare North Korea in violation of a previous resolution banning the firing of ballistic missiles.
But Russia and China, permanent veto-wielding council members, have opposed the move, unconvinced the rocket launch was a violation.
Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone told reporters he and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had agreed by telephone earlier yesterday to work together to seek a new Security Council resolution.
But UN diplomats said Washington has indicated it might be willing to accept a non-binding statement rather than a resolution, which the US fears could take too long, if one can be agreed at all.
A non-binding statement would likely be seen as diplomatic failure for Japan at home, where Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso is struggling with low voter support ahead of an election this year.
Aso was to leave yesterday for a summit of 16 Asian countries in Thailand, where diplomats say Japan will push for leaders to issue a statement about North Korea’s rocket launch.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin
RSS