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.
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RSS