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Japan will resume loans to Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Japan said on Thursday it is to resume yen-loans to Pakistan, halted in 1998 over Islamabad’s atomic tests, but added that Pakistan should give more information about Dr AQ Khan.

A formal announcement on the loans is expected to be made during Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to Pakistan early next month, Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima said. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri of the loan decision when they met at a meeting of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) in Islamabad on Thursday.

“The Japanese foreign minister conveyed the message that Japan is intending to reopen the Japanese yen loan, which was suspended due to the nuclear issue,” the spokesman said. Japan stopped giving Pakistan the annual $500 million development aid after it conducted nuclear tests in May 1998 in response to similar detonations by India. It had been Pakistan’s biggest aid donor.

“The resumption of the yen loan will activate more private sector involvement” in the two countries, he said. However, Machimura also urged Pakistan to provide more information about Khan, who in February 2004 confessed to passing atomic technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

Islamabad insists the government was not involved in Khan’s activity, AFP reported.

“We have asked Pakistan to provide us any information on AQ Khan and his organisation’s activity which has any connection with North Korea,” the Japanese spokesman said. agencies

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