JAPAN committed yesterday in Beijing to shoulder the responsibility of the destruction of all the chemical weapons it left behind in China during World War II, sources from the government-level negotiations on the chemical weapons issue said.
They reported that Japan said it fully accepted the seriousness and urgency of this issue and deplored the fact that the weapons were still harming the Chinese people.
Wang Yi, director of the Asian Affairs Bureau of China's Foreign Ministry, and Kato Ryozo, director of the Asian Affairs Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs led the two governmental delegations.
The Chinese side stressed that the problem of the abandoned weapons was caused by Japan's militarist invasion of China and that the Chinese side was the victim of aggression.
China demanded that Japan look into its war atrocities earnestly and shoulder all the responsibility for the complete destruction of the chemical weapons.
China said Japan must fulfil its obligation to destroy the chemical weapons as soon as possible under the terms of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.
The Japanese side expressed deep and sincere regret for the grave damage its invasion had brought to China, and admitted that Japanese troops had abandoned a large amount of chemical weapons in China after their defeat.
Japan said it is committed to solve the problem according to the spirit and principles of the Joint Declaration between Japan and China and the Peace and Friendship Treaty of Japan and the People's Republic of China.
Japan is willing to fulfill its obligations to destroy the weapons, as stipulated in the Convention on Chemical Weapons, it said.
No matter how many weapons there are, and how difficult technically it is to destroy them, the Japanese side said it will spare no efforts to solve this problem.
(Xinhua)