Abe calls on UN members to unite in pressuring North Korea

September 21, 2017

NEW YORK- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in his address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, called on UN member countries to unite in putting pressure on North Korea, following the country's sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3.

"We must make North Korea abandon all nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner," Abe stressed. "What is needed to do that is not dialogue, but pressure."

The Japanese leader urged the "strict and full implementation of the series of (UN) Security Council resolutions (against Pyongyang) by all UN member nations." The latest resolution, adopted last week, is designed to impose new sanctions, including a ceiling on oil supply to North Korea and a ban on textile exports from the country.

"In order to change North Korea's policies, we must strengthen our unity," Abe said.

"Japan will face up to North Korea's nuclear and missile threat through the Japan-US alliance and through Japan, the US and the ROK acting in unity," Abe said, using the acronym for South Korea's formal name, the Republic of Korea.

Abe spent about four-fifths of his 15-minute speech for covering the North Korea issue. After touching other issues including Security Council reform at the beginning, he said, "I have no choice but to focus my remarks on a single issue, that of North Korea."

In the wake of North Korea's firing of ballistic missiles over Japan into the Pacific on Aug. 29 and last Friday, Abe claimed: "The gravity of this threat is unprecedented. It is indisputably a matter of urgency."

"North Korea's nuclear weapons either already are, or are on the verge of becoming, hydrogen bombs," Abe pointed out. "Their means of delivery will sooner or later be ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles)."

"It was absolutely not a lack of dialogue that gave rise to this situation," he stressed.

"Again and again, attempts to resolve issues through dialogue (with North Korea) have all come to naught," Abe said, referring to a dialogue framework agreed between Washington and Pyongyang in 1994 and the Six-Party Talks since 2003, also involving Japan, South Korea, China and Russia.

"For North Korea, dialogue was instead the best means of deceiving us and buying time," he argued.

During the speech, Abe mentioned North Korea's abduction of a 13-year-old Japanese girl, Megumi Yokota, 40 years ago, after US President Donald Trump did so in his UN address on Tuesday.

"I will continue to do all possible efforts" for the return of Yokota and other remaining Japanese abduction victims, Abe said. Jiji Press