Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama vowed on Wednesday to face up to the bitter memories of his country’s wartime past that still stir distrust in Asia, an official said.
Hatoyama made the pledge during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and ahead of a G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Japanese government official said.
“The new government has the courage to keep a firm eye on history,” Hatoyama told Lee, the official said. “Based on it, we would like to jointly develop our future-looking relationship.”
Lee said he also wanted to forge relations of trust with Japan’s new government, which will be “one step higher” than their past bilateral ties, the official said.
Hatoyama, who has pledged to reach out to Asia, took office a week ago ending more than half a century of almost uninterrupted conservative rule.
The leader of the center-left Democratic Party of Japan has proposed that Japan build a new, non-religious state war memorial to serve as an alternative focus of national war remembrance to the controversial Yasukuni shrine.
Past visits by Japanese politicians and leaders to the Shinto shrine in Tokyo, which honors 2.5 million war dead but also 14 convicted war criminals, have badly rocked Japan’s relations with China, the Koreas and other neighbors.
During a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) on Monday, Hatoyama also said he would follow a landmark statement of apology for Japan’s wartime aggression issued in 1995 by then-prime minister Tomiichi Murayama — one of the few other left-leaning leaders in modern Japan.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of