Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Friday that Tokyo would step up its contributions to the international community rather than “turn inward” after the devastating quake and tsunami that struck in March.
Noda said Japan could take the lead in improving nuclear safety around the world by quickly and accurately sharing what it learned from the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant triggered by the disaster — the worst radiation leak since Chernobyl.
He also promised to provide nation-building assistance in newly independent South Sudan, aid to the drought-hit Horn of Africa and to support democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. He offered a US$1 billion loan for infrastructure and industrial development in that region.
“Japan is faced with numerous challenges but instead of turning inward ... Japan is intent on making better contributions to the international community and to continue its contributions to achieve a better future for the entire world,” Noda told a news conference.
Noda took office three weeks ago, becoming Japan’s sixth prime minister in five years. The former finance minister faces formidable challenges: reversing more than a decade of economic malaise, a crushing national debt and recovery from the quake that left more than 20,000 dead or missing and a reconstruction bill running into hundreds of billions of dollars.
Noda made his first trip abroad as prime minister to attend the UN General Assembly opening session, which he addressed on Friday. He met on the sidelines on Wednesday with US President Barack Obama.
Noda is viewed as strongly pro-US, and he described that alliance as the “lynchpin” of Japanese diplomacy.
However, he also said on Friday he would seek to deepen ties with China, Japan’s larger neighbor, which recently eclipsed it as the world’s second-largest economy.
Relations have long been strained between the two Asian powers. Animosity lingers over Japan’s often brutal World War II-era occupation of China. Tensions flared last summer after a confrontation near disputed, Japanese-controlled islands between a Chinese fishing boat and a Japanese patrol vessel.
Noda said because problems sometimes occur between the two countries, it was important to promote relations so they can ride through the rough patches. He said he wanted to take up an invitation to visit China extended to him by Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶).
“From a very broad perspective, we shall strive to promote relations [so] that they will stabilize and we need to further deepen mutually beneficial relations based on strategic interest,” he told a news conference.
Noda’s predecessor, Naoto Kan, a year ago became embroiled a contentious dispute with China, first arresting a Chinese trawler captain in disputed waters and then letting him go, drawing domestic criticism that he had caved in to Beijing.
Noda indicated he would try to contain such conflicts.
“Of course, at times problems occur, and it is precisely on such occasions that we engage in efforts from a broad perspective so that those incidents will not affect the overall relationship between the two countries,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS