Foreign Minister Taro Kono on Tuesday called on parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to urge North Korea to go beyond a freeze of nuclear testing and seek a "complete, verifiable and irreversible" end to its nuclear program.
"North Korea's nuclear and missile programs pose a grave challenge to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime," Kono said in Geneva during the second preparatory committee meeting for the 2020 NPT review conference.
Kono said Japan welcomes North Korea's promise last week to halt its testing of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and to dismantle its main nuclear testing site.