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.
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