RIA Novosti RUSSIAN NEWS & INFORMATION AGENCY 28 June 2005 |
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BEIJING, June 28 (RIA Novosti) - Beijing has called on Tokyo to step up efforts to destroy chemical weapons in China that date back to Japan's World War II occupation.
Liu Jianchao, the official spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Tuesday that the chemical weapons left in China posed a significant danger to the lives, health and property of Chinese people.
"The time has come for Japan to take practical action, which must mean more efforts to solve the issue of the abandoned chemical weapons in China," Liu Jianchao said.
Last week three Chinese people were injured in the city of Guangzhou, the capital of the province of Guangdong in southern China, when poisonous gas leaked out of a chemical weapons left by the Japanese Army. The Japanese Embassy in China confirmed this incident on Sunday and expressed its deep regret.
The diplomat said the Chinese government was particularly focusing on the need to destroy all the chemical weapons in the country and was making every effort to do so.
In July 1999, Beijing and Tokyo signed a memorandum on the destruction of the chemical weapons abandoned by the Japanese in Manchuria in 1945. Under the document, Japan recognized it had abandoned a considerable stock of toxic substances in China and promised to destroy it in line with the UN Chemical Weapons Convention.