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Japan and Australia sign defense pact to counter China's rise
[NIKKEI] 'Landmark agreement' to raise cooperation; Tokyo also courts U.K., FranceJapanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australian counterpart Scott Morrison on Thursday signed a treaty to facilitate joint exercises, as they vowed in a virtual meeting to strengthen security cooperation amid China's growing military influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) will facilitate faster deployment of Japanese Self-Defense Forces and Australian Defense Force personnel and ease restrictions on the transportation of weapons and supplies for joint training and disaster relief operations. "This is a landmark agreement that will bring Japan-Australia security cooperation to a new level," said Kishida in signing the agreement. Morrison said the pact will enable the two countries to cooperate at a high level. Australia is the second country with which Japan has concluded such an accord after the United States. Japan will also seek to reach such a pact with Britain, with which Japan launched negotiations in October, and France as the two countries have been increasing defense cooperation with Tokyo in response to an increasingly assertive China. Japan and Australia agreed to start talks on the RAA in 2014 and reached a broad agreement in November 2020, but Japan's death penalty system had been an obstacle to concluding the deal. Posted by: 3dc 2022-01-07 |
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