New Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso yesterday rushed to a UN summit in New York less than a day after taking office, hoping to show Japan as an active global player.
Aso, a conservative former foreign minister, flew out to address the UN General Assembly later yesterday in New York. He is the first Japanese prime minister to go to the UN summit in three years because of political turmoil in Tokyo.
Aso, who has also become chairman of the G8 major industrial powers, was expected to offer a role by Japan in curbing the financial turmoil that has spread across the globe following the collapse of Wall Street firms.
He was also expected to make a new push for a permanent seat for Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, on the UN Security Council.
Japan’s previous bid to join the powerful body flopped because of strong opposition by China, the only Asian nation in the elite club.
Aso took office on Wednesday after the ruling party overwhelmingly chose him to replace Yasuo Fukuda, whose popularity tumbled after he raised the costs of health care for the elderly amid a faltering economy.
He took office as tough general elections loom against an increasingly strong opposition.
Aso comes from the opposite wing of the Liberal Democratic Party to Fukuda, a foreign policy dove who throughout his career has worked to repair Japan’s historically tense relations with China and South Korea.
As foreign minister, Aso spoke of the concept of an “arc of freedom of prosperity” encompassing democracies in Asia such as India, along with the US, Australia and NATO members.
His speech was widely interpreted as a bid to move Japan in a new way of foreign-policy thinking that excludes China and Russia from its main interests.
But Aso, campaigning to be prime minister, said he would work for a stable relationship between Japan and China. The Asian economic powers have been working since 2006 to repair relations.
Aso’s newly appointed foreign minister, Hirofumi Nakasone, said he would meet with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎), in New York.
“The government is going to enhance the relationship with the United States while pushing forward a cooperative relationship with neighboring countries, including South Korea and China,” Nakasone said.
Analysts doubted that Aso would do anything to risk relations with China, such as visiting the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which honors Japanese war dead including war criminals.
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