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MOFA seeks friends in Japanese Diet

The government will lobby hard to persuade more Japanese lawmakers across the political spectrum to join the Sino-Japanese Diet Members Conference, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.

The conference, a group in Japan’s lower house of parliament, lost more than half of its members in the general election on Sunday.

Nien Shin-shyh (粘信士), deputy secretary-general of the ministry’s Association of East Asian Relations, said the Japanese group had 300 members but only 142 won re-election, including 70 members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 60 from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the rest from other parties.

Nien said Taiwan maintains good relations with both the former ruling LDP and opposition parties and bilateral ties are expected to blossom under the new leadership.

The DPJ, headed by Yukio Hatoyama, won 308 seats in the 480-member lower house on Sunday.

Taiwan has sent a congratulatory note to the DPJ and pledged to maintain sound relations with the two major political parties, Nien said.

The DPJ charter makes a special mention of Japan’s economic relations with Taiwan, he said.

Japan and Taiwan broke diplomatic relations in 1972 but have maintained strong non-official ties through cultural and economic exchanges.

Japan was one of the first countries to offer assistance after Typhoon Morakot badly battered the south of the country early last month.

In addition to ¥10 million (US$108,000) in cash donations and ¥100 million in goods and supplies, Tokyo also dispatched a team of medical experts to assess the public health situation in post-typhoon areas.

The Japanese public also donated more than ¥57.5 million to the typhoon relief fund, Nien said.

In related news, the ministry still could not give a definite date on when its representative office in Sapporo, Japan, was expected to open. It had been scheduled to open in late July.

Nien said the office, located near the Sapporo train station, was scheduled to begin operation before the end of the year.

Also See: Democratic Party moves to prove itself

Also See: The balance between the US, Japan and Taiwan
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