Tokyo,
\nJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump agreed to keep up pressure on North Korea until Pyongyang abandons its nuclear and missile programmes, Japan\u2019s foreign ministry said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The two leaders confirmed in phone talks on Wednesday night there would be \u201cno meaningful dialogue\u201d unless North Korea agreed on \u201ccomplete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation,\u201d the ministry said in its statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cDialogue for the sake of dialogue would be meaningless,\u201d Abe told reporters after the phone talks.<\/p>\n
South Korea says its President, Moon Jae-in, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution to the North Korea standoff, was offered a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang. The offer was made via Kim\u2019s sister, who visited South Korea last week for the Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
US Vice-President Mike Pence, who was also in South Korea for the Olympics opening, said on Wednesday the United States was open to talks with Pyongyang but only to convey that it must give up its nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Separately, Japan reported what it said it had identified as another suspected illegal ship-to-ship transfer involving a UN blacklisted vessel.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s Foreign Ministry said it had reported to the United Nations that North Korean-registered tanker, the Rye Song Gang 1, was engaged in a transfer of goods with the Belize-registered tanker \u201cWan Heng 11\u201d, in defiance of UN sanctions.<\/p>\n
The transfer took place early Tuesday in the East China Sea about 250 km (155 miles) east of Shanghai, the ministry said in a statement issued late on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cJapan must be united with the international community to enhance pressure on North Korea to the maximum degree,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump agreed to keep up pressure on North Korea until Pyongyang abandons its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21968,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21966\/revisions\/21968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}