Nudged by the US, Japan will host multinational sea exercises in October as part of an initiative to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, even though analysts say the move could hurt talks with North Korea, an unspoken focus of the drill.
The Foreign Ministry said yesterday that Tokyo's hosting of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) exercise would mark the first time it has been held in Asia.
The US-led initiative, launched last year to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons-related materials, has angered North Korea, which is in a stand-off with Washington and its allies over its nuclear ambitions.
Yesterday's announcement comes at a time when Japan is trying to set talks with North Korea on the fate of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang decades ago and is considering whether to resume stalled talks to establish diplomatic ties.
It also follows US pressure on Tokyo to play a bigger role in the initiative, launched by US President George W. Bush.
"If you want to put this in the context of Japan getting past the wartime constitution ... it is Japan emerging as a serious player," a US official said last week, referring to Tokyo's efforts to stretch the limits of its pacifist constitution.
While some analysts have said that Pyongyang is unlikely to harden its stance towards Tokyo given its hopes of winning badly needed economic aid from Japan, others have warned that North Korea may delay talks.
Tokyo has said that it will offer full-scale financial aid to North Korea once diplomatic ties are established.
"Given its past behavior, North Korea may delay the timing of talks with Japan," said Lee Jong-won, a Rikkyo University professor who specializes in North Korea.
"It needs to show both internationally and domestically that it will not give in to pressure."
But Lee said a delay would not mark a change in North Korea's basic policy of seeking normalization of ties with Japan and that this probably was why Tokyo decided to go ahead with the drill.
Japanese media have said talks between Japanese and North Korean officials may be held as early as next week in Beijing, although Japan's top government spokesman said yesterday that no dates have been fixed.
North Korea has repeatedly criticized the US-led PSI, also participated in by Russia, Australia, Singapore and many European nations including France and Britain.
"The US seeks to deter the DPRK [North Korea] from having any economic ties and trade with other countries and thus isolate and strangle it," Pyongyang's KCNA news agency said last week.
China, which is not a core member of the PSI, has questioned the legitimacy of intercepting ships and aircraft, and some legal experts also say such action may be illegal.
Japan sent a Coast Guard vessel to the first interdiction exercise held in the Coral Sea off Australia's northeast coast last September, and has sent military and Coast Guard observers to various other PSI drills.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS