US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Japanese counterpart condemned North Korea yesterday, a day after a multinational panel blamed it for a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship.
In their joint stance against the nuclear-armed communist regime, both sides stressed the importance of their half-century alliance, which has been badly strained in recent months by a dispute over an unpopular US military base.
Clinton, kicking off a week-long Asia tour, called the partnership the “cornerstone” of regional stability, as she sent a stern message to Pyongyang on the issue expected to dominate her talks later in Beijing and Seoul.
“We agreed that North Korea must stop its provocative behavior, halt its policy of threats and belligerence toward its neighbors, and take irreversible steps to fulfill its denuclearization commitments and comply with international law,” she said after meeting Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.
“We cannot allow this attack to go unanswered by the international community,” she said, adding that on the Beijing leg of her trip from Monday she looked forward to “intensive consultations in China.”
Clinton, who was in Japan for less than four hours before leaving for Shanghai, did not specify what steps Washington would seek.
“It’s premature for me to announce options or actions without that level of consultation with regional nations that are most directly affected by North Korea’s behavior,” she said.
The rise in tensions in Northeast Asia comes at a time when Japan and the US have squabbled over the fate of a US base on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, where residents oppose a US troop presence.
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama proposed moving the base off the island to appease local sentiment, straining ties with the administration of US President Barack Obama.
However, as the search for an alternative site in Japan has proved fruitless, Hatoyama has caved in to Washington’s demand to honor a 2006 pact struck by previous conservative governments and relocate the base on Okinawa.
Hatoyama is expected to announce next Friday that he will largely honor the base pact, news reports published on the eve of Clinton’s visit said.
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