G7 warns on North Korea

TAORMINA, Italy – G7 leaders on Saturday, May 27, described North Korea’s recent nuclear and missile tests as a grave threat and said they were ready to take new measures to contain it.

“North Korea, a top priority in the international agenda, increasingly poses new levels of threat of a grave nature to international peace and stability and the non-proliferation regime through its repeated and ongoing breaches of international law,” the club of industrialized democracies said in a statement at the end of a two-day summit here.

“North Korea must immediately and fully comply with all relevant UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) and abandon all nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.

“Condemning in the strongest terms North Korea’s nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches, we stand ready to strengthen measures aimed at achieving these objectives and strongly call on the international community to redouble its efforts to ensure the sustained, comprehensive and thorough implementation of relevant UNSCRs.”

The section of the statement dealing with Pyongyang concluded with a reference to the plight of mainly Japanese citizens kidnapped by the North Korean regime and held, in some cases, for decades.

“We urge North Korea to address humanitarian and human rights concerns, including the immediate resolution of the abductions issue.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump spent most of an hour-long meeting on Friday, May 26 discussing tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Trump, who has called North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un “a madman with nuclear weapons” vowed that the problem posed by the dictator “will be solved.” – Rappler.com