Senior diplomats from Japan, the United States and South Korea agreed Tuesday to continue their efforts toward the denuclearization of North Korea through "dialogue and sanctions," a Japanese foreign ministry official said.
Their meeting in Tokyo came a day after Pyongyang said it had successfully carried out tests of a new long-range cruise missile over the weekend.
At the outset of the three-way talks, Takehiro Funakoshi, head of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, said, "Our cooperation becomes all the more important as North Korea advances furthermore in its nuclear and missile development."