Japan will sign a defense pact with Indonesia next week, officials in both governments said, the latest effort by Tokyo to forge closer security ties with Southeast Asian nations and build a counter-balance to China.
Japan has already bolstered partnerships with the Philippines and Vietnam, the two countries most at odds with China over a territorial row in the South China Sea. Japan itself is embroiled in a bitter dispute with China over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, further to the north.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo is to visit Tokyo next week for talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the two sides will sign an agreement on increasing cooperation in military training and technology, the officials said.
Currently, the two countries only have an agreement for the exchange of military students.
Though it will be a non-binding agreement, it is seen as the first step in bolstering defense ties.
The document that will be signed will be on “capacity building, cooperational defense and also peacekeeping operations,” said Armanatha Nasir, spokesman for Indonesia’s foreign ministry.
Other officials said the two countries could also discuss sharing of intelligence.
A Japanese foreign ministry official said Widodo’s trip sends a “big message” as this will be his first state visit outside Southeast Asia.
Japan is supplying maritime patrol boats to Vietnam and the Philippines, and will also hold its first naval exercises with the Philippines in the coming months.
For Tokyo, closer ties with Jakarta could give its defense firms a better chance to compete against South Korean military equipment makers, who are establishing themselves in the region, a Japanese defense ministry official said.
Widodo will visit China immediately after his stop in Japan. Indonesia and China have a more developed military relationship, and Jakarta has bought Chinese-made missiles and other military hardware.
Widodo will bring up the South China Sea issue as part of regional stability talks during his visit to Japan and China, Nasir said.
Indonesia has been a self-
appointed broker in the myriad territorial disputes between its neighbors and China over the South China Sea.
Tokyo has no territorial claims in the South China Sea, but worries about becoming isolated should China dominate a waterway through which much of Japan’s ship-borne trade passes.
The defense cooperation with Southeast Asian nations is also in line with a more muscular security policy advocated by Abe, who wants to loosen the restraints of Japan’s pacifist post-war constitution, and dovetails with Washington’s “rebalance” toward Asia.
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
RSS