Japan to Lift Some Sanctions on N. Korea: Abe

Tokyo, July 3 (Jiji Press)--Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday that Japan has decided to remove some of its sanctions against North Korea in line with progress in the process for Pyongyang's reinvestigation into Japanese abductees to the communist state. Japan concluded that North Korea has prepared an unprecedented investigation system that allows its national defense commission and state security department, which can make national decisions, to take the lead, Abe told reporters. He was referring to a North Korean special committee tasked with a comprehensive investigation into the issue of abductions of Japanese nationals by Pyongyang. Japan made the decision by holding a meeting of cabinet ministers including Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Keiji Furuya, minister in charge of the abduction issue, and a session of the National Security Council. The country is to lift bans on entry into Japan by North Korean nationals and ships and stop requiring reports on money remitted and physically taken to North Korea. But Tokyo is to keep intact a ban on entry into Japan by North Korea's Mangyongbong freight-passenger vessel and chartered flights as well as an all-out trade ban between the two countries. END