N Korea nuclear programme is serious mid-term risk: Obama

ISE-SHIMA, Japan: US President Barack Obama said on Thursday that North Korea’s nuclear ambitions pose a serious medium-term threat, adding that engagement with China and other countries had seen progress on the issue.

“It’s something that we’ve put at the centre of discussions and negotiations with China,” Obama told reporters.

“What we’ve seen is improved responses from China and countries in the region that may reduce the risks of North Korea selling weapons or missile material to other countries.”

Obama was speaking on the first day of a two-day Group of Seven summit in Ise-Shima, central Japan. He said leaders from the G7 summit had discussed the need to sustain economic growth in the United States, adding that progress was starting to emerge in Europe’s economy.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye called on the international community Thursday to send a clear signal to North Korea that it will have no future unless it abandons its nuclear weapons programmes. Park said North Korea’s nuclear programs should never be tolerated as it poses a serious threat to the international community as well as Northeast Asia.”Now, the international community should be united and put pressure on North Korea to make it recognize that it has no future unless it gives up its nuclear programmes,” the president said in a summit with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, according to presidential spokesman Jeong Yeon-guk. The North has repeatedly pledged to boost its nuclear capability, viewing its nuclear programme as a powerful deterrent against what it claims is Washington's hostile policy towards it. After the summit, Park and Hailemariam observed some of the signings of 40 memorandums of understanding.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told fellow Group of Seven leaders on Thursday that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes are also a concern to Europe, a top Japanese government official said.

Chairing the first of two days of a G7 summit in central Japan, Abe told his counterparts that Pyongyang’s development of nuclear technology and ballistic missiles poses a threat to international peace, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshige Seko told reporters.

The prime minister also said it is important to have Russia’s constructive engagement in neighbouring Ukraine and said Japan is ready to extend a fresh $500 million in aid to Iraq, Seko said.