Apr 11 11:19 PM US/Eastern
TOKYO, April 12 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama left Haneda airport Monday for a two-day visit to Washington to attend a summit on nuclear security to be hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama and meet bilaterally with other leaders on the sidelines of the event.
Hatoyama is set to hold talks with Obama during a banquet for the Nuclear Security Summit scheduled for Monday evening, as they will be seated next to each other, but no formal meetings were arranged for the two leaders.
"It's extremely important to cooperate internationally in eradicating nuclear terrorism from the world," Hatoyama told reporters at his office before leaving for the airport. "I will adequately state Japan's position (at the summit)."
The premier, who has been in office for almost seven months, hopes to brief Obama on the Japanese government's progress on the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station and reiterate a commitment that Tokyo will resolve by the end of May the issue, which has been a major headache for the two countries. "I will say (to Obama), 'Let's cooperate with each other so we can come to a conclusion by the end of May,'" Hatoyama said.
At the Washington summit, Hatoyama, leader of the only country to have experienced atomic bombings, plans to announce the idea of establishing a nuclear security support facility in Japan with the aim of beefing up nonproliferation and security measures against nuclear terrorism.
Hatoyama will also meet bilaterally with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on the fringes of the summit that will bring together representatives from 47 countries as well as such organizations as the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Expected topics for the meeting with Hu include efforts to contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, China's recent execution of four Japanese nationals, as well as the deadlocked bilateral issue of joint gas field development in the East China Sea.
Food security will also likely come up during the Japan-China talks after Beijing's arrest of a suspect in a dumpling poisoning case that made 10 Japanese people ill in December 2007 and January 2008.
The participating countries for the summit include five declared nuclear states -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- as well as India and Pakistan, which possess nuclear weapons and have refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate pursuing worldwide nuclear disarmament, describes nuclear terrorism as the largest threat to global security and seeks at the summit to strengthen global safeguards against the theft and purchase of nuclear materials or technologies by terrorists.
The summit follows Obama's announcement last Tuesday of a new U.S. nuclear strategy that aims to limit the circumstances in which the country would use nuclear weapons, and the signing by the U.S. president and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday of a landmark disarmament treaty in Prague.
Hatoyama is set to return to Tokyo on Wednesday.
Posts
