Japan says time running out on N. Korea sanctions
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-19 17:04

Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said on Sunday North Korea should realise that time was running out before Japan and the international community would begin discussing slapping it with economic sanctions.

His comments came days after Pyongyang warned Japan that imposing sanctions would be tantamount to war.

"I think North Korea must recognise that it doesn't have that much time," Machimura said in a discussion on NHK television.

The foreign minister said North Korea must return to the table for six-way talks on its nuclear weapons programmes before the United Nations began discussion of possible sanctions against it.

Support for economic sanctions has grown in Japan since Tokyo said tests on human remains Pyongyang handed over as those of Japanese citizens it had abducted decades ago proved they belonged to other people.

Following repeated meetings at which Pyongyang had failed to satisfy Japan as to the accuracy of information on Japanese abductees it insisted were dead, Machimura said stricter policies might have to be implemented.

"If this process is repeated continuously for one, two or three years ... well there is a limit to everything," he said.

"The international community as a whole, the United Nations, will have to implement stricter policies, including sanctions," the Japanese minister added.

Machimura said Pyongyang should be given one opportunity to provide accurate information about Japanese abductees.

"To get at the truth, we want to hand over the results of our tests on the remains and have them look into the strange, contradictory points in the documents they have given us," he said.

"If their attitude is still insincere, we have to start to think about harsher economic sanctions," he added.

North Korea handed over human bones at talks in Pyongyang in November, saying they were those of Megumi Yokota and Kaoru Matsuki, two of the 13 Japanese Pyongyang has admitted abducting in the 1970s and 1980s to teach its spies about Japan.

Japan, which has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, lodged a protest with Pyongyang and demanded clarification of the fate of a number of Japanese abductees still unaccounted for.

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