BRUSSELS (Reuters) - G7 leaders will call on North Korea on Friday to get rid of its nuclear weapons if it wants sanctions against the country to be lifted, a senior European union official said on Tuesday.

The G7 are the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. Their leaders are to meet in Canada on June 8-9.

“We expect a strong and united G7 message to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to deliver a complete, verifiable and irreversible de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula if the current sanctions pressure is to be gradually lifted,” the official said ahead of the summit.