Japanese efforts to recover and dispose of hundreds of thousands of chemical weapons abandoned in China by the Imperial Army at the end of World War II will take five years longer than planned, an official said yesterday.
A 1997 international convention required Japan to remove the weapons by April 2007.
However, Japan and China requested a five-year extension until 2012 because of the large number of weapons still to be unearthed and destroyed.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based organization that oversees the treaty, approved the extension last month, said Keigo Akashi, a Cabinet Office official in charge of the chemical weapons disposal project.
DISPOSAL FACTORY
Akashi said Japan wants to make preparations to build a chemical weapons disposal factory in Jilin Province in northeastern China by the end of this March, pending Chinese government approval.
Japan has so far removed 38,000 chemical weapons.
Japan's Imperial Army controlled China's northeast for a decade before its World War II defeat, and left behind about 700,000 chemical weapons -- a lingering source of resentment for many Chinese. Nearly half of the weapons are believed to remain in the Jilin area, according to a Japanese government estimate.
Beijing says that abandoned chemical weapons have killed at least 2,000 Chinese since 1945.
Disposal of abandoned munitions is a rare point of agreement between the normally estranged Chinese and Japanese governments.
Japan's relations with China have fallen to their lowest in decades over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a Tokyo war shrine.
Critics say the visits glorify the country's past militarism, while territorial disputes and disputes over history school books that some say whitewash Japan's wartime atrocities have added to the tensions.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
RSS