Japanese Ambassador To Russia Hopes Putin-Kim Summit To Help Denuclearize North Korea

Japanese Ambassador to Russia Toyohisa Kodzuki expressed hope on Monday that the upcoming meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would contribute to the denuclearization of North Korea

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd April, 2019) Japanese Ambassador to Russia Toyohisa Kodzuki expressed hope on Monday that the upcoming meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would contribute to the denuclearization of North Korea.

"Japan and Russia are unanimous about the necessity to promote the denuclearization of North Korea. And I hope that this meeting will make its contribution in this regard," Kodzuki told reporters.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier on Monday that the meeting between Putin and Kim would take place before the end of April. Meanwhile, South Korean media have suggested that the talks are most likely to be held in the Russian Far Eastern city of Vladivostok. An employee of a Vladivostok train station told Sputnik last Thursday that North Korean official Kim Chang Son, who was seen in Vladivostok last Wednesday, had been examining security measures at the station.

North Korean leader has once expressed his readiness to make concessions in the denuclearization issue. Last June, during his first historic summit with US President Donald Trump in Singapore, he agreed to make efforts toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for freezing of US-South Korean military exercises and gradual removal of sanctions. However, the sides failed to secure the success as the second summit in Hanoi in late February ended up with Trump walking away from talks, since Kim demanded the full removal of sanctions without pledging to denuclearize the sites that the United States had specified.