Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori offered Monday to partially ease economic sanctions against Pakistan, prompted by a promise by Gen. Pervez Musharraf to continue a freeze on nuclear tests, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.
But in more than two hours of talks Musharraf refused to make further commitments to nuclear nonproliferation, rejecting Mori's call to immediately sign an international treaty banning nuclear tests, the official said.
Mori and Musharraf also addressed tensions between Pakistan and India, steps to combat terrorism, the civil war in Afghanistan as well as bilateral cooperation in their talks at Musharraf's office, the official said in a briefing to reporters.
Musharraf told Mori that Pakistan needs more time to obtain a national consensus on signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. "If we sign the treaty now, it would lead to domestic instability," Musharraf was quoted as saying.