US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in a telephone call on Thursday that a UN Security Council resolution calling for a 30-day ceasefire in Syria must be implemented immediately, reports Reuters.
"Both agreed that the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies should promptly and fully implement UN Security Council Resolution 2401 (2018). This resolution demands an immediate ceasefire in Syria," Merkel's spokesman said on Friday.
"The chancellor and the president are also concerned about Russian President Putin's latest remarks about arms developments and their negative impact on international arms control efforts," spokesman Steffen Seibert added in a statement.
Meanwhile, North Korea denied reports it had cooperated with Syria on chemical weapons, dismissing them as a fabrication by the United States to pressure the country, state media reported late Thursday.
State run KCNA news agency cited a spokesman at the foreign ministry's research institute of American studies arguing that the United States made a "nonsensical argument" that it helped Syria produce chemical weapons.
"As we have clearly said several times, our republic does not develop, produce and stockpile chemical weapons and opposes chemical weapons themselves," the spokesman said, via KCNA.
Robert Wood, US disarmament ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, said on Wednesday that there has been a history of a relationship between the two countries with regard to missile activity, chemical weapons components.
Two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country's chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past six months, according to a confidential UN report on North Korea sanctions violations.
North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up the measures in response to six nuclear weapons tests and several long-range missile launches.
The world's chemical weapons watchdog in The Hague opened an investigation on Sunday into attacks in the besieged, rebel-held Syrian region of eastern Ghouta to determine whether banned munitions had been used, diplomatic sources told Reuters.
