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| Southeast Asia |
| Japanese "Comfortable" with Howard’s Pre-emptive Strike Comments |
| 2002-12-09 |
| I got this via Tim Blair's excellent site:(http://timblair.blogspot.com/) Prime Minister John Howard has won his first statement of support from an Asian nation over his pre-emptive strike comments, with Japan's counter-terrorism ambassador declaring he was "comfortable" with Australia's position. And a rather important statement of support it is, too... In an interview with The Age, Hiroshi Shigeta said he had looked at the full transcript of Mr Howard's comments and heard the subsequent explanations. "What Prime Minister Howard said and what has been explained in order to assure the South-East Asian countries taken together, I consider Australia is in favour of respecting international law," he said. "With that statement, I am comfortable." Shigeta's hedging a bit here. Still, the tone is very different than what I would have expected. The controversy began when Mr Howard declared his support for pre-emptive military strikes against suspected terrorists in neighbouring countries, as a last resort. The comments were discussed when Japanese officials dealing with counter-terrorism met their Australian counterparts in Tokyo last week. The meeting was the first following an agreement by Australia and Japan last month to work closely together to combat terrorism following the Bali bombings. Mr Shigeta's comments are in stark contrast to the hostile reaction in South-East Asia and his position may rankle countries that remain wary of Japan because of its brutal march across the region in World War Two. Fair enough. But the Japanese aren't the ones "brutally marching" right now, are they? |
| Posted by:Patrick Phillips |
| #2 It's very important; the number 2 military power in Asia ex-USA is Japan (qualitatively) so what the Japanese say is important to the strategic calculus. |
| Posted by: Brian 2002-12-09 18:53:24 |
| #1 The Japanese don't have much to be a-quiver about. They track down their own Bad Guys with a fair amount of diligence. Arabs stand out like sore thumbs in downtown Kagoshima, so they're easy to track down. And they don't have what you might call a large Muslim community. So Howard authorizing an incursion into some country that doesn't bother chasing down Bad Guys, or even actively gives them shelter, is no skin of the Japanese fore. |
| Posted by: Fred 2002-12-09 14:58:28 |