China urges Japan to speed up destruction of abandoned chemical weapons

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BEIJING - Beijing has urged Tokyo to make sure chemical weapons left behind by Japanese occupation troops after World War II are destroyed as soon as possible, the official Xinhua News Agency said on Tuesday

Japan controlled China’s northeast - formerly known as Manchuria - for a decade before its wartime defeat, and says its army left behind an estimated 700,000 chemical weapons, mostly in that region.

During a four-day trip that ended Tuesday, five members of Japan’s parliament were taken to sites where the weapons were buried in Jilin province in China’s northeast and Guangdong province in the south, Xinhua said.

Chinese officials ¢briefed them of the harm and menace those abandoned chemical weapons brought to the Chinese people and the environment,” the agency said.