Japan to lift sanctions against North Korea
Posted on 3 July 2014 - 03:24pm
Last updated on 3 July 2014 - 04:46pm
TOKYO: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday Japan will remove several sanctions imposed on North Korea in line with the progress in Pyongyang's reinvestigation into Japanese nationals abducted by the communist state.
Abe said Japan concluded that North Korea had prepared investigation procedures that allow its national defence commission and state security department to take the lead, Japan's Jiji Press news agency reports.
The prime minister was referring to a North Korean special committee tasked with comprehensive investigation into the abductions of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s.
Japan made the decision after a meeting of cabinet ministers including Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Keiji Furuya, minister in charge of the abduction issue and a session of the National Security Council.
The country is to lift bans on entry into Japan by North Korean nationals and ships, and stop requiring reports on money remitted and physically taken to North Korea.
But Tokyo is to keep intact a ban on entry into Japan by North Korea's Mangyongbong freight-passenger vessel and chartered flights as well as an all-out trade ban between the two countries. – Bernama
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/content/north-korea-will-not-send-envoy-un-security-council-meeting
