BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japanese diet members to urge their government to fulfill the promise it made to the international community and China on destroying the Japanese abandoned chemical weapons, and to completely destroy them as early as possible, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

    Between April 29 and May 2, Endo Otohiko, head of the Japan-China New Century Association, led five diet members of the association and paid a visit to some burial sites of the abandoned chemical weapons in northeast China's Jilin Province and south China's Guangdong Province.

    Takamatsu Akila, who is in charge of the Abandoned Chemical Weapons Office of the Cabinet Office, kept them company during the visit.

    Officials of the two Chinese ministries who accompanied the Japanese visitors briefed them of the harm and menace those abandoned chemical weapons brought to the Chinese people and the environment.

    They urged Japanese diet members to urge their government to fulfill the promise it made in the Convention on the Banning of Chemical Weapons and the memorandum of the two countries on the destruction of the Japanese abandoned chemical weapons, and to completely destroy all these weapons as early as possible.

    Official statistics show that Japan abandoned at least 2 million tons of chemical weapons in about 40 sites in 15 provinces in China when it was defeated in World War II, with a large proportion in the northeast China.

    A total of 2,000 Chinese people have fallen victims to the chemical weapons over the past decades.

    An August 2003 toxic leak which killed one and injured 43 others in Qiqihar City of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province was the most serious tragedy in recent years.

    China and Japan signed a memorandum in 1999, in which Japan agreed to provide all the necessary funds, equipment and personnel for the retrieval and destruction of all Japanese abandoned chemical weapons in China by 2007. Enditem