P.M. gives defence pledge

Press, 21 January 1983, Page 6

P.M. gives defence pledge

NZPA Washington The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Yasuhiro Nakasone, pledged yesterday that his country would build up its defences with the aim of controlling strategic straits that provide the Soviet Union with a gateway to the Pacific. Mr Nakasone completed talks with President Ronald Reagan on trade, defence, and global issues and said afterwards that they had reaffirmed the alliance between the United States and Japan. The two leaders met for two hours on Wednesday and again for nearly an hour yesterday. He made his pledge at a news conference and in an earlier newspaper interview. Although he emphasised that Japan’s defence would be, in line with its pacifist Constitution, he acknowledged that his remarks were likely to lead to a turbulent session of the Japanese Parliament on his return home. A reference by the former Prime Minister, Zenko Suzuki, and Mr Reagan to the United StatesJapanese “alliance” when Mr Suzuki visited Washington in 1981 caused a furor in the Parliament, leading to the resignation of the Foreign Minister, Masayoshi Ito.

Mr Suzuki later denied that the joint communique issued in Washington referred to a military alliance.

Defining the United StatesJapan alliance now, Mr Nakasone said that it referred to a close relationship with the United States in defence.

political and economic areas. He said that Japan’s defence mission was to protect its own territory and airspace and hundreds of nautical miles around. In addition Japan aimed at guarding sea lanes 1000 miles to the southwest and south-east. Mr Nakasone met congressmen during the day and told his news conference that the talks had been stormy. But participants in Mr Nakasone’s meetings with members of the Senate and the House of Representatives said that they had been courteous and without acrimony. Members were said tc have been impressed by Mr Nakasone’s forthright style, as well as with his performance since assuming power in November. Nevertheless, severe unemployment in the United States and a SUS2O billion trade deficit with Japan have ■ created a strong protectionist tide in Congress. The Japanese Government has cut tariffs on 323 import items in the last year and a working group is studying ways to reduce excessive formalities and other barriers encountered by American businesses seeking wider Japanese markets. During his talks in Washington Mr Nakasone made no further, trade concessions but limited himself to explaining what had been accomplished so far and the political problems that the market-open-ing measures had encountered.

But Mr Reagan said that nothing would better prove to the American people the good intentions of their

Japanese trading partners than tangible progress in dismantling Japan’s trade barriers. “I’m aware of the political sensitivity in Japan on tariff reductions on a number of products, as well as the Prime Minister’s decision to conduct a comprehensive review of their standards of (import) certification system,” Mr Reagan said. The two nations had agreed to set up a working group to study energy trade, apparently to explore the possibility of selling Japan oil from Alaska, Mr Reagan

said. Mr Nakasone had accepted an offer to include a Japanese specialist in the work of the United States space laboratory mission in 1988. Meanwhile the United States International Trade Commission ruled yesterday that motor-cycles imported from Japan had flooded the American market and could put the only American maker, Harley-Davison, out of business. The 2-1 finding sets in motion a process which could lead to quotas or tariffs on the Japanese motor-cycles.