The foreign ministers of Japan and France agreed Saturday to cooperate in seeking a new international framework for fighting climate change at a key U.N. meeting later this year, Japanese officials said.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, that Tokyo is ready to work with Paris, host of the 21st Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), in which member countries will aim for a post-2020 regime for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Japan is struggling to set its own reduction goals amid uncertainty over whether the country's idled nuclear reactors will go back online. Utilities have been burning more fossil fuels to cover the loss of atomic power, affected by safety concerns due to the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

Fabius asked Japan for its cooperation to successfully conclude the meeting in December and Kishida responded by saying Tokyo will "proactively contribute to adopting a framework in which every country participates," the Foreign Ministry said.

The ministers met on the sidelines of a U.N. meeting on disaster risk reduction that began Saturday in Sendai.