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Japan PM Koizumi cements US ties

Posted on: Monday, 26 June 2006, 19:26 CDT

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes his final visit to the United States this week, capping five years in which Tokyo boosted ties with Washington but sowed discord with Japan's neighbors.

The last summit with President George W. Bush for Koizumi, who will step down in September, comes as talk of a North Korean long-range missile test underscore the security threats that have bound the two allies together.

Koizumi took considerable political risks and challenged taboos in Japan by sending ships to refuel U.S. coalition vessels in Afghanistan and by sending troops to Iraq in Japan's most dangerous overseas deployment since World War Two.

Under Koizumi, Tokyo has agreed to integrate military operations with U.S. forces in Japan, hewed closely to American positions in complicated nuclear negotiations with North Korea, and echoed U.S. concerns about the security of Taiwan.

Japan began pulling out its 550 troops from the southern Iraqi city of Samawa just days before Koizumi is to visit the United States after a trip to Canada. But he will win kudos for Japan's help and for reconstruction aid in Iraq.

"The U.S.-Japan alliance strengthened very much in the five years under the friendship between President Bush and Prime Minister Koizumi," said a Japanese official in Tokyo.

"Their chemistry is fabulous," said the official.

The two leaders, who will display that chemistry in a visit to the Memphis, Tennessee home of music legend Elvis Presley, will discuss Iraq, Iran, China and North Korea among other issues, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

ASIAN HISTORY VEXES U.S.

While Koizumi and Bush see eye-to-eye on the U.S.-led war on terrorism and big global issues, Japan's ties with China and South Korea have been in a rough patch during Koizumi's tenure.

Amid animosity dating back to Japan's colonial annexation of Korea in 1910 and invasion and occupation of large parts of China between 1931 and 1945, Tokyo's ties with its neighbors have plunged due to Koizumi's annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, where some convicted World War Two war criminals are honored along with Japan's millions of war dead.

The spats over history have caused the leaders of China and Japan to shun Koizumi at Asian summits, harming efforts to maintain a united front at nuclear talks with North Korea.

Some analysts also see risks to the United States in being so close to a leader who has offended the historical sensibilities of South Korea, a U.S. ally, and China, with which Washington is trying to forge a constructive long-term relationship.

"There is a danger of seeming to be allied to some of the most intransigent aspects of Koizumi's policy in relation to history and Japan's neighbors," said Derek Mitchell, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The former Pentagon official says Washington needs to tell Tokyo that the animosity hurts U.S. interests and that the Japanese "need to think freshly and more strategically about the connection between history and the future of the alliance."

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer said Bush "recognizes that the Japanese are trying to figure out how to honor their war dead without embracing the cause for which they died."

"The president takes the view that Japan and China have got to reconcile their differences and it is not particularly helpful for foreigners to tell them how to do it," he told reporters.

Source: REUTERS

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