Japan on Tuesday extended sanctions against North Korea until October to keep the pressure on Pyongyang over its abductions of Japanese nationals.
TOKYO: Japan on Tuesday extended sanctions against North Korea until October to keep the pressure on Pyongyang over its abductions of Japanese nationals, officials said.
The move comes despite a flurry of diplomacy including a US mission to Pyongyang in hopes of meeting Saturday's deadline in a six-way deal for North Korea to freeze a key nuclear site in exchange for fuel aid.
Japan has taken the hardest line at the six-nation talks and has refused to fund the breakthrough US-backed deal, saying it will not help North Korea until the kidnapping dispute is resolved.
"There has been no progress on the nuclear, missile and abduction issues. We cannot lift the sanctions unless there is progress on these issues," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.
"North Korea has promised to take concrete action toward denuclearisation. If it does not fulfill the promise, the situation surrounding North Korea will not change," Abe told reporters at his executive office.
His top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, said earlier in the day, "Sometimes we need appropriate pressure."
"We want North Korea to recognise that it must have a forward-looking response to the nuclear, abduction and other pending issues," he said.
In October last year, the Japanese government barred all imports from North Korea -- including money-makers such as clams, crabs and high-end matsutake mushrooms -- for six months.
The government has decided to extend the sanctions by another six months, Shiozaki said.
"If they want to lift the sanctions, they must ... resolve the kidnappings issue with concrete actions," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last month.
Abe has built his career campaigning for North Korea to resolve the dispute over its kidnappings of at least 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, who were abducted to help train North Korean spies.
Pyongyang returned five victims and their families and says the rest are dead, but Japan maintains that they are alive and kept under wraps because they know too many secrets.
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