Year of the
Rooster nothing to crow about
By
Hisane Masaki
TOKYO - As the Year of the
Dog begins, Japan remains dogged by a host of
foreign-policy challenges carried over from the
Year of the Rooster.
Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi says he will step down in
September when his current term as president of
his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) expires.
In the meantime, his most important - and
difficult - foreign-policy challenge will be to
get Japan's relations with Asian neighbors,
especially China and South Korea, back on track.
Japan has been locked in a diplomatic
dogfight with the two Asian neighbors over
Koizumi's repeated visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni war
shrine, territorial disputes
and other issues stemming from Japan's aggression
before and during World War II.
How long
will Japan continue to be at odds with China and
South Korea? A thaw in the chilly relations with
the two appears very unlikely at least until
Koizumi leaves office.
Koizumi yet again
defended his visits to the shrine during a
nationally televised news conference on Wednesday
marking the start of the new year. "I do not
understand why foreign governments interfere with
a spiritual issue and try to turn it into a
diplomatic issue."
A leader has the right
to express respect to a country's war dead, he
said, reiterating that the Yasukuni visits merely
show his resolve that Japan will never wage war
again.
Koizumi has visited the shrine
every year since taking office in April 2001. His
last Yasukuni visit on October 17 provoked a fresh
wave of angry responses from China and South
Korea. Yasukuni enshrines 14 World War II Class A
war criminals, including former prime minister
General Hideki Tojo, along with 2.5 million other
war dead.
The four leading candidates to
succeed Koizumi as LDP president and prime
minister - Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe,
Foreign Minister Taro Aso, Finance Minister
Sadakazu Tanigaki and former chief cabinet
secretary Yasuo Fukuda - have differing views on
the Yasukuni issue. Abe and Aso are hawks and
steadfast backers of Koizumi's shrine visits,
while Fukuda and Tanigaki are widely seen as being
critical of or at least skeptical about them.
Japan's Asia strategy is expected to be a
major issue in the race to succeed Koizumi, and
who wins his support will determine the direction
of Japan's relations with China and South Korea
after he is gone.
Other major issues
topping Japan's foreign-policy agenda for 2006
include making progress on North Korea's nuclear
ambitions and its abduction of Japanese nationals,
drawing up an exit strategy for Japanese troops
deployed in Iraq, and finalizing a pact with the
United States on the realignment of its forces
stationed in Japan. In addition, Japan will
continue to press strenuously for reform of the
United Nations Security Council to pave the way
for the country getting a permanent seat on the
powerful body. Japan will also face the task of
accelerating free-trade agreements (FTAs) with
trading partners.
China and South
Korea Japan's relations with China and
South Korea remain at their lowest point in
decades because of rekindled territorial disputes,
Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the UN
Security Council and the controversy over Japanese
school textbooks authored by right-wing scholars,
as well as Koizumi's repeated visits to the
Yasukuni Shrine. In April, a wave of anti-Japan
riots swept across China.
The shrine issue
has resulted in the suspension the past four years
of annual visits by Japanese and Chinese leaders
to each other's capitals.
And during the
summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) forum in Busan, South Korea, in
mid-November, Chinese President Hu Jintao refused
to hold brief bilateral talks with Koizumi on the
sidelines of the international meeting. South
Korean President Roh Moo-hyun agreed to brief
talks with Koizumi on the fringes of the APEC
summit in Busan, but did so only as a courtesy.
Roh hosted the summit.
A similar scenario
unfolded in mid-December at Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings. Koizumi
chided Beijing and Seoul on Wednesday, saying they
"should not close down dialogue just because of
one problem".
Tokyo and Beijing are also
locked in a simmering fracas over Chinese gas
projects in the disputed waters in the East China
Sea near the so-called median line, which was
drawn by Japan but has not been recognized by
China. The line is meant to separate the two
countries' 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic
zones (EEZs). The disputed Senkaku Islands, or the
Diaoyu Islands in Chinese, are on the Japanese
side.
The LDP-led coalition plans this
month to introduce a bill in the diet, or
parliament, to create off-limits zones near
structures set up for resource exploration and
development in the Japanese EEZ. Trespassers would
be punished with prison terms of up to one year
and fines of 500,000 yen (US$4,300). The bill is
aimed at supporting Teikoku Oil Co, which was
granted concessions last summer to start
experimental drilling in the East China Sea in an
apparent bid to counter natural-gas exploration
conducted nearby by China.
Another
contentious issue relates to Japan's devastating
setback in its bid for a long-coveted permanent
Security Council seat last year. Many countries,
led by the US and China, vehemently objected to a
council-expansion proposal by the Japan, Germany,
India and Brazil, known as the G-4, and the issue
never got to a vote last autumn.
Meanwhile, the new year was ushered in
with yet more bad news for Japan's ties with China
and South Korea. Koizumi pledged when he met with
Roh in June in Seoul to consider building a
state-run, non-religious facility as an
alternative to Yasukuni Shrine. But the Koizumi
government opted not to earmark money for a study
on such a facility in the new budget plan for
fiscal 2006.
Also at the end of last
month, there were news reports that an unnamed
Japanese staff member for Japan's Shanghai
consulate committed suicide in May 2004 after
being blackmailed by a Chinese man to provide key
intelligence. Japan has complained to China about
the incident, while China has angrily denied the
reports.
North Korea The US,
China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and North Korea
have held several rounds of talks in Beijing since
the summer of 2003 to defuse tensions over
Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. The last round of
talks was held in November, and no date has been
set for the next session, though China and South
Korea have said they hope the next session will be
held this month. North Korea agreed in principle
in September to dismantle its nuclear-weapons
programs in return for security guarantees and
energy aid. But there has been no progress since.
North Korea has threatened to boycott the
six-way talks unless the US drops financial
sanctions against it. Washington froze the assets
of eight North Korean companies in September,
accusing them of helping the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction. It also acted against
a Macau-based bank that is alleged to have helped
North Korea launder drug money and counterfeit
currency.
Although all countries
participating in the six-way talks other than
North Korea say they want a nuclear-free Korean
Peninsula and hope for an early settlement of the
nuclear issues in the talks, there are sharp
differences among them. While China, a primary
Cold War ally of North Korea, and South Korea
insist on settling the dispute peacefully through
dialogue, the US and Japan stress the need for a
combination of dialogue and pressure in dealing
with the Stalinist state.
Aside from
nuclear issues, Japan has yet to resolve the issue
of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean
agents. Koizumi made two whirlwind trips to
Pyongyang, first in September 2002 and again in
May 2004. During his first summit with Koizumi,
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted that
agents of his country had abducted some Japanese
in the 1970s and 1980s.
Pyongyang
continues to insist that of the 13 Japanese it
abducted, eight later died. But it has failed to
provide convincing proof of the deaths. Japan
suspects some of the eight may still be alive. The
other five abductees were allowed to return to
Japan shortly after the first Koizumi-Kim summit.
Japan formally recognizes 16 Japanese nationals,
including the five returnees, as having been
abducted by North Korea. Tokyo's basic policy is
that Pyongyang will not be offered aid or normal
diplomatic relations until the abduction issue is
resolved. The Japanese government has been seeking
concrete information on the abductees and
demanding that any surviving abductees be
repatriated.
Senior government officials
of Japan and North Korea met at Christmas in
Beijing and agreed to resume talks on normalizing
diplomatic ties. They agreed to establish three
parallel working groups to address separately the
issues of normalizing diplomatic ties, abduction
and security. The three working groups are to meet
late this month. But prospects for a resolution of
the abduction issue remain gloomy.
In
addition to information on the abductees and
repatriation of any surviving abductees, Japan
demanded in the senior officials' meeting that
North Korea extradite perpetrators. Recent news
reports said two North Korean agents have been
identified as being responsible for abducting two
couples who have since been repatriated.
Among the four potential candidates to
take over the LDP presidency and premiership from
Koizumi in September, Abe is known to favor a
tougher approach than Koizumi toward Pyongyang,
including sanctions, while Fukuda is seen as
favoring "dialogue" rather than "pressure" as does
Koizumi. It is widely believed that Koizumi has a
strong desire to lay the groundwork for
normalization of ties with North Korea before
standing down in September. News reports say
Pyongyang, apparently concerned about the
post-Koizumi Japanese policy, has also informally
conveyed to Tokyo its readiness to accept another
visit by the prime minister.
SDF
mission in Iraq On December 8, the
Japanese government, one of US President George W
Bush's staunchest allies, extended for another
year the mission of its Self-Defense Forces (SDF)
deployed in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah as
part of the US-led coalition there, prolonging
Tokyo's largest military mission since World War
II.
Although the SDF mission in Iraq is
quite unpopular among the Japanese public, the
Koizumi government since early 2004 has stationed
about 600 non-combat troops in Samawah on a
humanitarian and reconstruction mission, such as
repairing schools and purifying water. The mission
extension does not require the SDF troops to
remain in Iraq for another full year, however. The
Koizumi government is exploring ways for the SDF
troops to exit Iraq in hopes of shifting Japan's
role there to providing economic aid.
Tokyo is considering withdrawing troops
around the middle of this year as British and
Australian soldiers in charge of security in and
around Samawah and protecting SDF personnel are
also looking at pulling out of southern Iraq
around May. Koizumi is believed to be inclined to
complete the withdrawal of SDF troops before he
steps down in September, although he has stopped
short of referring to any specific target date.
Japan-US relations Japan and
the United States are expected to finalize a pact
in March on the realignment of US forces stationed
on Japanese soil. The two allies signed an interim
pact at the end of October after striking a deal
on the long-running dispute over the relocation of
a key US air station in the southern Japanese
island prefecture of Okinawa. The Bush
administration is reviewing the role of the US
bases in Japan as part of its military's worldwide
"transformation". The US bases some 47,000 troops
in Japan, and residents in Okinawa prefecture -
where most of the troops are based - have long
complained of crime, crowding and noise linked to
the military.
It remains uncertain whether
the relocation plan for Futenma Air Station will
proceed smoothly. Most local citizens oppose the
relocation plan, and the Okinawa Prefectural
Assembly also adopted a statement in mid-December
opposing it, stepping up pressure on the Koizumi
government.
Japanese government officials
fear that if the new relocation plan were to fall
apart, the Japan-US security alliance would suffer
a serious setback.
Meanwhile, the ruling
LDP is moving toward revision of the post-World
War II pacifist constitution. The LDP has already
unveiled its draft of a new constitution that
would clear the way for the nation to play a
greater role in international security affairs and
boost joint operations with the US. The LDP-led
coalition and the largest opposition Democratic
Party of Japan have already agreed to introduce
legislation this month setting procedures for a
national referendum on a new constitution. The
Koizumi government is also preparing to submit to
the upcoming diet session an amendment to the SDF
Law to enshrine international peace cooperation
activities as another primary mission of the
Japanese troops, as called for in the new National
Defense Program Outline adopted at the end of
2004. Currently, the SDF's primary mission is
limited to defending the country from aggression
and keeping public order.
Japan-US
relations are now as good as they have ever been,
backed by a personal friendship between Koizumi
and Bush. In his news conference on Wednesday,
Koizumi reaffirmed his belief that Tokyo's defense
relations with Washington are more critical than
its ties with other nations. "The United States is
the only nation in the world that sees an attack
on Japan as an attack on itself," he said. It
remains to be seen whether Koizumi's successor
will be able to keep ties as strong and friendly.
Free trade agreements Japan
concluded its first FTA, with Singapore, in 2002.
It has since signed FTAs with Mexico and Malaysia.
Japan has also reached basic agreements in FTA
negotiations with the Philippines and Thailand and
is negotiating FTAs with South Korea, Indonesia
and the 10-member ASEAN. Japan and Chile agreed in
November to open FTA negotiations. FTA
negotiations between Japan and India are also
expected to start late this year or next.
But Japan has a lot to do if it is to
march in step in the ever-intensifying global and
regional FTA competition. For instance, the target
date of the end of 2005 for Japan and South Korea
to conclude FTA negotiations has passed. The
Japan-South Korean negotiations have stalled for
the past year because of sharp differences over
farm trade and also fractured political ties. FTA
negotiations between Japan and ASEAN, launched in
the spring of 2005, have also failed to make
significant headway.
Kicking off FTA
negotiations with India - and possibly with
Australia - within the next couple of years would
be Japan's way of countering the influence of
China, the world's most populous country and a
rapidly ascending economic as well as military
power.
In a fresh sign of how Japan has
begun to place particular importance on ties with
India as a counterbalance to the unmatched overall
power of China in the region, Foreign Minister Aso
made a two-day visit to the world's largest
democracy this week. In late April, Koizumi also
visited India. Koizumi's Indian counterpart
Manmohan Singh is expected to visit Tokyo this
summer.
Aso also plans to visit Australia
this month.
Hisane Masaki is a
Tokyo-based journalist, commentator and scholar on
international politics and economy. Masaki's
e-mail address isyiu45535@nifty.com.
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