TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and President
Barack Obama will agree at their talks Friday to make joint efforts to realize
a nuclear weapons-free world, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
A communique they will issue will announce a plan to hold a
meeting of Asian nations in Tokyo in January to prepare for the Global Nuclear
Security Summit to be held in the United States in March.
The communique will welcome the growing global movement
toward nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, stating that the United
States, as the nation leading the movement, and Japan, as the only atom-bombed
country, will work together to realize the abolition of nuclear weapons.
In the communique, Japan and the United States also will
announce that they will work in close cooperation for the success of the Global
Nuclear Security Summit and a U.N. meeting to review the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty at U.N. headquarters in May by setting three key
targets: nuclear disarmament, nuclear nonproliferation and peaceful uses of
nuclear energy and nuclear security.
Hatoyama and Obama also will urge North Korea to return to
the six-nation talks on denuclearizing the country. They will call for all U.N.
member nations to fully execute U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, which
calls on signatory nations to inspect all cargo to and from North Korea
suspected of containing items related to weapons of mass destruction and
dispose of any such items found.
Concerning Iran, the two will urge Tehran to quickly resolve
the issue of its suspected nuclear weapons development through dialogue and
negotiation, citing its responsibility to restore global confidence in the
country.
On nuclear nonproliferation, Japan will highly praise the
U.S. stance of pursuing the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty and its pledge to cooperate in launching negotiations for a treaty to
ban the production of weapon-grade fissile materials.
Japan and the United States will promote the reduction of
nuclear weapons in a transparent, verifiable and irreversible manner, the
communique will say.
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
