Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, seeking to draw on his close ties with US President Donald Trump in talks today, is to urge the US leader not to forget Tokyo’s security concerns in his drive for a historic deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Abe has spoken to Trump 30 times since he became president, including eight face-to-face meetings, and officials say Washington is well aware of Tokyo’s stance toward Pyongyang.
“Japan has repeatedly made clear that Japan is seeking complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all the weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles of all ranges, and Japan’s position has not yet changed,” a Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said on condition of anonymity. “We think the US, of course, understands Japan’s position.”
Photo: AP
Still, concerns simmer in Tokyo that Trump, his eye on November congressional elections, could cut a deal that would allow him to boast of protecting US cities from nuclear attack, but leave Japan vulnerable to shorter-range missiles.
Japan also fears that Trump could eventually agree to reduce US military forces in South Korea, leaving Japan as a frontline state against a Korean Peninsula under heavy Chinese influence.
That would mean “Japan’s constitution, diplomatic policies and national security policies all will have to be totally reviewed for the completely new situation,” said Katsuyuki Kawai, a special adviser on foreign affairs to Abe.
“It would be a nightmare for Japan and also for the United States,” he said.
Trump suggested on Friday last week that the most tangible outcome of the summit on Tuesday next week could be the “signing of a document” to end the technical state of hostilities — 65 years after the Korean conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Trump also said he wanted to drop the term “maximum pressure” that his administration — and Japan — had used to describe an approach that combined tough economic sanctions with diplomacy and military threats from the US president.
The White House on Monday said that the US policy had not changed, while the Japanese foreign ministry official sidestepped the question of whether “maximum pressure” was still Japan’s stance.
“Japan’s position is to expect the upcoming US-North Korea summit will be an opportunity to advance the issues of nuclear, missiles and, most importantly, abductees,” the official said.
Japan has made clear that it would not provide economic assistance for North Korea until all three issues are resolved, including the emotive matter of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents decades ago.
Abe, who has made resolving the abductees issue a keystone of his political career, would also likely seek reassurance that Trump plans to keep that on his agenda with Kim Jong-un, after the president said he had not discussed human rights with North Korean envoy Kim Yong-chol at the White House last week.
“I think what Mr Abe expects is [that Trump] will at least raise this issue with Kim Jong-un when they meet,” said Tetsuo Kotani, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs.
Japan could seek its own summit with the North Korean leader, depending on the outcome of his meeting with Trump.
Abe’s close ties with Trump have so far done little to insulate Japan from Washington’s “America First” stance on trade. Trump is pressing Tokyo for a bilateral free-trade agreement, while Japan insists multilateral deals work best.
Japanese officials declined to speculate on whether trade would join North Korea on the agenda at today’s talks, but White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that “trade issues and other matters” are expected to come up.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion