Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations on Sunday affirmed they will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea and pledged to maintain "maximum pressure" on Pyongyang until it rids itself of nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Taro Kono said.
"We fully agreed that we will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea," Kono said on the first day of the two-day meeting in Toronto, suggesting Pyongyang's announcement that it will suspend nuclear tests and long-range missile launches is insufficient to meet the demands of the international community.
"We shared the view that (the announcement) made no reference to the abandonment of the nuclear program," Kono said of the top diplomats from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States plus the European Union.