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| Japanese PM Shinzo Abe |
NEW YORK (Kyodo) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged all U.N. member states Wednesday to block North Korea's access to "the goods, funds, people and technology" necessary for its nuclear and missile development programs.
In his address at the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York, on the heels of a sixth nuclear test and a series of ballistic missile launches by North Korea, Abe said history shows that attempts at dialogue with the North "have all come to naught."
Abe demanded that all states strictly and fully enforce the series of U.N. Security Council resolutions targeting North Korea, saying the world must unite to make Pyongyang change its policies.
"We must make North Korea abandon all nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner. What is needed to do that is not dialogue, but pressure," he said.
Without specifically naming them, Abe laid criticism at the feet of countries including China and Russia that have advocated for direct talks with North Korea to get it to denuclearize.
Citing the Agreed Framework reached between Washington and Pyongyang in 1994 and the six-party talks involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States that have stalled since 2008, Abe said North Korea had "no intention whatsoever of abandoning its nuclear or missile development."
"For North Korea, dialogue was instead the best means of deceiving us and buying time," he said. "In what hope of success are we now repeating the very same failure a third time?"
Read the full story at The Mainichi