TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Japanese government on Tuesday welcomed a tougher new U.N. sanctions resolution restricting oil trade with North Korea following the country's sixth nuclear test, while vowing to remain vigilant against further provocative acts by Pyongyang.
"I highly appreciate the fact that this markedly stringent sanctions resolution on North Korea was unanimously and rapidly adopted," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters after the U.N. Security Council adopted the new resolution Monday, moving unusually quickly to a vote about a week after the country's most powerful nuclear test yet.
"It is important for us to place a higher level of pressure on North Korea than ever before and make it change its policies...I think the international community has been able to coordinate, unite and show a clear resolve to do that," he said.
While the resolution backed off from the total oil embargo that the United States and Japan had been seeking, it imposed restrictions on exports of crude oil and petroleum products to North Korea for the first time, along with other measures to target its sources of foreign currency.
The latest resolution followed North Korea's sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3, which the country says was of a hydrogen bomb that can be fitted to an intercontinental ballistic missile.
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