KIEV, July 1: Ukraine and Japan will hold consultations on Kiev’s arms sales to Beijing, the nations’ foreign ministers told reporters on Saturday in the Ukrainian capital.

“Japan is quite worried and is following closely operations involving arms sales to China not only from Ukraine,” Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said.

“On our part, we want nations that carry out such operations to react very seriously to the situations from the point of view of security in the Asian region,” he said, according to the Ukrainian translation of remarks he made in Japanese.

His Ukrainian counterpart Borys Tarasyuk said: “Since our Japanese colleague expressed concern over our cooperation with China in this sphere, we agreed to hold consultations between the two nations’ (foreign) ministries.”

The comments came a day after Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said that a Ukrainian firm had delivered ‘six X-55 cruise missiles to China and another six to Iran in 2000 and 2001’.

“This is a most flagrant violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) of which Ukraine is a member,” Mr Ivanov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Ukraine denounced the comments as an attempt ‘to create an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust in Ukraine, especially on the eve of a G8 meeting in Russia’.

Mr Ivanov’s comments concerned a case of illicit arms sales that Ukrainian law enforcement authorities had reported on to fellow members of the MTCR, including Russia, in 2004, the statement said.

The operation ‘uncovered the contraband of the mentioned rockets from Ukrainian territory to Iran and China by an international criminal group that included citizens of Ukraine, Russia and Australia. The contraband was carried out by using falsified documents under which the arms were to be handed over to the Russian Federation’, it said.

The X-55 is an air-to-surface cruise missile designed for strategic bombers that can be outfitted with a nuclear warhead and can have a range of up to 2,500 kilometres.

The 12 missiles in question did not leave Ukrainian territory with warheads, the Ukrainian investigation found.

The 34-member MTCR was established in 1987 to counteract the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Russia and Ukraine joined in 1995 and 1998, respectively.—AFP