China urged Japan to take substantial measures to speed up the process of the disposal of chemical weapons abandoned by Japan in China during the World War II, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan Thursday.

At a regular news conference, Kong said Japanese Vice-Minister of the Cabinet Office Takeshi Erikawa, who came to handle the abandoned chemical weapon issue, started his China tour on Tuesday. He came back to Beijing on Thursday after his visit to the site where chemical weapons were buried in Dunhua City of northeast China's Jilin Province on Wednesday.

Kong said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei will meet with Takeshi Erikawa on Friday and Chinese officials will hold working talks with him.

According to Kong, abandoned chemical weapons by Japan have been found in about 40 sites in 15 provinces in China, with the largest proportion in Dunhua.

"These chemical weapons have posed a great threat to the safety of the Chinese people and the ecological environment," said Kong.

"China has urged the Japanese side to provide the exact sites where wartime chemical weapons are buried in China but has not yet received any response from Japan," he said.

Kong said China hopes the Japanese side could accelerate its process of dealing with the issue and eliminate a problem that has lingered for sixty years.

Official statistics show that Japan abandoned at least 2 million tons of chemical weapons in China. A total of 2,000 Chinese people have fallen victim to the chemical weapons over the past decades. In August 2003, a toxic leak, which killed one and injured 43 others in Qiqihar City of Heilongjiang Province, was the most serious tragedy in recent years.

China and Japan joined the United Nation Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. Two years later, the two sides signed a memorandum, in which Japan agreed to provide all the necessary funds, equipment and personnel for the retrieval and destruction of all the Japanese-abandoned chemical weapons in China by 2007.

(Xinhua News Agency October 14, 2005)