China and Japan were scheduled yesterday to hold their first security talks in Beijing in more than two years, with North Korea's missile and nuclear programs on the agenda.
"The meeting is for Tokyo and Beijing to share their basic security and defense policies and philosophies with each other," an official of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's China division in Tokyo said.
"Talks will surely include issues of North Korea's missile launches and six-party talks, but the chief objective is to develop mutual understanding," he said.
The official also said that Japan would request that China improve the transparency of its military budget expansion.
The meeting was agreed to by both countries' foreign ministers in May on the sidelines of an Asian forum in Qatar, amid a slight easing in tensions between the perennially feuding neighbors.
China and Japan have held nine security meetings since 1993, although the last one was in Tokyo in February 2004.
China has scaled back senior official encounters with Japan primarily over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which honors 14 World War II criminals among 2.5 million war dead.
Senior foreign and defense officials that planned to attend yesterday's meeting included Tsuneo Nishida, deputy minister at the Japanese foreign ministry, and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei (
A Japanese embassy official in Beijing said the talks were scheduled to start at 3pm.
North Korea's test-firing of ballistic missile tests on July 5 were expected to be one of the top items on the agenda during yesterday's talks.
Japan had urged fellow UN Security Council members to support a binding resolution that would impose sanctions on the North for launching the missiles.
But China strongly opposed the measure in favor of diplomatic negotiations. A watered-down version that dropped a reference to sanctions or military action was finally passed.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not