Shinzo Abe arrived in Cuba on Thursday for the first visit to the nation by a Japanese prime minister, saying he wants to “open a new page” in relations.
Abe met with Cuban President Raul Castro during a visit that came after Tokyo’s close ally Washington restored ties with the communist nation last year.
“I sincerely hope my stay here becomes an opportunity to open a new page in the relationship of friendship between both nations,” Abe said in an interview published in the Cuban Communist Party’s official newspaper, Granma.
Photo: Reuters
He also met Raul’s brother and former Cuban president Fidel Castro to discuss nuclear proliferation.
Abe and Fidel Castro “discussed the complexities and hazards affecting the world and the need to strengthen efforts toward the elimination of nuclear weapons and preservation of peace,” an official statement that was read on television said.
Cuba is one of the few countries that maintains relationships with North Korea, whose nuclear ambitions are considered one of Japan’s biggest security threats.
Abe also called for “open dialogue” to stimulate trade and investment, development cooperation and tourism.
The head of the world’s third-largest economy was received with military honors at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, where he had a private meeting with Raul Castro.
Later, he placed a floral tribute at the monument to Cuban independence activist Jose Marti.
Japan was Cuba’s second-largest trading partner between 1970 and 1985, but the relationship deteriorated drastically as the Cuban economy took a hit from the breakup of the Soviet Union, a key ally, in the early 1990s. Trade totaled about US$35 million in 2014.
On Monday, Cuba signed a debt restructuring deal with Japan, according to which Tokyo will forgive part of Cuba’s debt, leaving it to pay US$606 million.
Of that, US$249 million is scheduled to be deposited in an investment fund for Japanese businesses in Cuba, the Japanese government said.
Australian scientists have raised questions over the efficacy of the AstraZeneca and University of Oxford COVID-19 vaccine in establishing herd immunity, calling for a pause on its widespread rollout as the country recorded one new case of the virus yesterday. Opposition to the vaccine casts a cloud over Australia’s immunization plans, with 53 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab already on hand. “The question is really whether it is able to provide herd immunity. We are playing a long game here. We don’t know how long that will take,” Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology president Stephen Turner said. Turner added
A racing pigeon has survived an extraordinary 13,000km Pacific Ocean crossing from the US to find a new home in Australia. Now authorities consider the bird a quarantine risk and plan to kill it. Kevin Celli-Bird yesterday said he discovered that the exhausted bird that arrived in his Melbourne backyard on Dec. 26 last year had disappeared from a race in the US state of Oregon on Oct. 29. Experts suspect the pigeon that Celli-Bird has named Joe — after US president-elect Joe Biden — hitched a ride on a cargo ship to cross the Pacific. Joe’s feat has attracted the attention
China has possibly committed “genocide” in its treatment of Uighurs and other minority Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China said in a report on Thursday. The bipartisan commission said that new evidence had last year emerged that “crimes against humanity — and possibly genocide — are occurring” in Xinjiang. It also accused China of harassing Uighurs in the US. China has been widely condemned for setting up complexes in Xinjiang that it describes as “vocational training centers” to stamp out extremism and give people new skills, which others have called concentration camps. The UN says that
The Polish Supreme Court on Friday quashed a lower court’s green light for the extradition of a businessman to China for alleged fraud, a charge he has denied, saying that he is being targeted for supporting Falun Gong. Polish authorities took Chinese-born Swedish citizen Li Zhihui, now 53, into custody in 2019 on an international warrant issued by China for alleged non-payment in a business deal, Krzysztof Kitajgrodzki, his Polish lawyer, told reporters. Following the Supreme Court ruling, the case would return to a lower appellate court for review. Kitajgrodzki told reporters that it was still not a given that his client
RSS