Excerpt from the Security Council Stakeout by Ambassador Koro Bessho,
Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations,
Ambassador Nikki Haley, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations,
And Ambassador Cho Tae-yul,
Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations,
Following Security Council Consultations on Non-proliferation/DPRK
8 March 2017
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Ambassador Koro Bessho:Thank you Nikki and thank you Ambassador Cho for joining us.
First of all I would like to thank Nikki for her very strong leadership in joining with us to call for this meeting, and I appreciate that the Presidency has called this meeting at a very early date soon after the arrival back from a very important mission. Most of what needs to be said, I think, has already been said by Nikki and the President, Matthew, but I would just add two things.
One is that, yes, this is certainly an important matter, a serious smatter for the whole world. But for Japan, for Japan, it is something that is totally unacceptable. We have made it very clear to the North Koreans that we are not going to accept this, this time again, we have made direct statements to them that this is totally unacceptable and we have condemned them very strongly on it.
Second point is that this is actually very dangerous, the three missiles which landed in our EEZ, landed where fisherman do fishing for squid. There could be ordinary civilians doing ordinary things, planes could be flying, ships could be navigating. They didn’t let anyone know about their intentions and they just did it. So the simultaneous launch which they said was done by a part of their military which is responsible, which is tasked, according to them, for striking US bases in Japan when necessary, that is again something which shows us that they are really serious in these aggressive actions, and we really need to call upon our colleagues, the international community, to take a very strong stance, sending a very clear message to DPRK. And I’m glad that, again, the Security Council has come up with a very strong statement yesterday, and very helpful in their discussions today as well.
I’ll turn the floor over to our colleague.
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Question: Just a follow-up on the Freeze-for Freeze proposal, do you also think North Korea has to go first in terms of suspending the nuclear program to suspend the maneuvers?
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Ambassador Bessho: On the point about Freeze-for-Freeze, what we are looking for is denuclearization of DPRK. That needs to be made very clear. That is the ultimate goal, and as Nikki said, even at the starting point we need some assurance they are serious about denuclearization. So Japan’s position is that it’s not Freeze-for-Freeze, but it should be denuclearization that we’re looking for. On the THAAD question I will of course defer to my friend Ambassador Cho, but as far as Japan is concerned, there’s no reason why China should worry about Japan on this. DPRK has no reason to shoot missiles in our direction because of whatever is a problem with THAAD. We are a very peaceful nation, we have maintained our calm and self-restraint throughout all of this, but we feel that enough is enough.
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*Full video of this stakeout is available at UN Web TV:
