Tough calls await on antipiracy use of weapons

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The government embarked Wednesday on preparations to dispatch Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers to protect Japanese vessels and other ships connected with Japan from pirates in waters off Somalia, issuing an order for maritime policing operations, government officials said.

At the same time, the government is to come up with a new bill covering antipiracy measures. In either case, the issue of how weapons should be used will become a focal point.

The MSDF is likely to face tough decisions over the use of weapons on its antipiracy mission in waters off Somalia.

Prime Minister Taro Aso said Wednesday night at the Prime Minister's Office that it was a matter of course for the government to do its utmost to safeguard the lives and property of Japanese people.

"We'll prepare a formal legal framework [for antipiracy measures], but [until a new law is established], the MSDF will initiate maritime policing operations," he said.

The government will shortly dispatch a research mission to Djibouti and other littoral nations in the area to select ports for MSDF destroyers to call at, and will also start studying other concrete measures.

The government is likely to issue an order for maritime policing operations at the beginning of March after it maps out plans including guidelines for the escorting of ships and for MSDF antipiracy drills, the government officials said.

It hopes the antipiracy mission in waters off Somalia will have begun by the end of March, they said.

The maritime policing operation will be the third of its kind to be conducted by the MSDF, but the first in open seas.

Meanwhile, the government and ruling parties will start working on a new bill of antipiracy measures, with the aim of submitting it to the Diet at the beginning of March.

Under the regulations of maritime policing operations, the MSDF only limited use of weapons and is not allowed to protect foreign-registered vessels with no connection to Japan.

"Basically, MSDF antipiracy measures should be dealt with under a new law," Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said Wednesday.

The ruling parties Wednesday held a meeting of an antipiracy project team and started looking into the content of the bill.

Regarding the use of weapons during maritime policing operations, the MSDF is allowed to shoot directly at pirate ships that ignore orders to stop within Japanese waters, according to the Japan Coast Guard Law.

However, in waters off Somalia, the MSDF will only be allowed to shoot directly at a pirate ship when it must defend itself from hostile fire or if it must embark on an emergency evacuation operation.

When a pirate ship approaches an MSDF destroyer, MSDF officers will have to make a tough call on whether they can shoot at the ship. The government and ruling parties plan to enable the MSDF to protect foreign-registered ships with no connection to Japan under the new law, the government officials said.

They are also to study relaxing restrictions on the use of weapons. But New Komeito Secretary General Kazuo Kitagawa showed a cautious stance during a press conference Wednesday, saying: "The possibility of an armed conflict arising with a pirate ship is small. [And should a pirate ship approach,] they are able to fire a warning shot."

(Jan. 30, 2009)

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090130TDY03101.htm

Boys find artillery shell, bring it to primary school

The Yomiuri Shimbun

NAHA--Two sixth-grade boys found an unexploded artillery shell on their way to Shonan Primary School in Haebarucho, Okinawa Prefecture, and brought it to the school's entrance, it has been learned.

According to the Ground Self-Defense Force's Naha base, the unexploded artillery shell is a U.S.-made 90mm shell with no fuse. The Naha base said that it could explode even though it does not have a fuse.

The two boys found the shell on the side of a road about 100 meters from the school at about 8 a.m. on Wednesday, picked it up and carried to a spot near the school's entrance, where they left it. They then told teachers about their finding, the school said. The teachers contacted the city board of education.

GSDF officers later arrived to disarm and remove the shell.

(Jan. 30, 2009)

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090130TDY02305.htm

Aso goes on defensive in policy speech

Aya Igarashi and Makoto Miura / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

Prime Minister Taro Aso cast aside the combative approach he exhibited immediately after taking office and embraced a strategy of defense when he delivered Wednesday's policy speech to the Diet.

The question remains, though, with this speech in which he vowed to make steady progress in implementing policies, can Aso effectively put a bad patch of difficulties in managing his administration behind him and regain the initiative in battling against the opposition camp?

During Aso's speech in the House of Representatives plenary session, the prime minister called for cooperation from the opposition parties while casting a look to his left toward the seats of opposition party members.

"What the public wants is not confrontation for the sake of it, but politics that quickly produces results," Aso said in the speech.

But Democratic Party of Japan President Ichiro Ozawa, seated toward the back of the hall, sat with his eyes tightly shut and registered no reaction to Aso's words. Aso looked calm as he finished his speech, but the applause from lawmakers around him was sparse.

In the policy speech he delivered in September soon after taking office as prime minister, Aso referred to the DPJ 12 times. He directed a string of questions at the DPJ to counter the position of the opposition camp and provoke it.

Four months later, this confrontational stance seems to have vanished.

During Wednesday's speech, Aso never mentioned the DPJ by name. He read from a prepared script in subdued tones except when he raised his voice to say, "I'm going to actively hold discussions with the opposition parties."

When reporters asked about the difference between the two speeches after Wednesday's Diet session, he coolly replied, "I've had no change of heart."

But it is obvious the dramatic changes in the political circumstances surrounding Aso over the past four months have led to a change in the style and content of his speeches.

When he delivered his previous policy speech last autumn, Aso planned to quickly dissolve the lower house for a general election. Accordingly, ruling party members were sure to unconditionally shower the prime minister with praise for openly expressing a hostile attitude toward opposition parties, since he would be the face of the Liberal Democratic Party in the election.

But Aso later decided to postpone the dissolution of the lower house due to the worldwide financial crisis. Furthermore, due to repeated slips of the tongue by the prime minister, the Aso Cabinet's approval ratings in Yomiuri Shimbun surveys has halved from 49.5 percent at the time of its launch to 20.4 percent.

Yoshimi Watanabe, a former state minister for administrative reform who recently bolted from the LDP, reacted to the latest speech, saying, "I sense he's even lost the power to provoke [the opposition parties], with his approval ratings as low as they are."

Securing a recovery of his Cabinet's approval ratings will not be an easy task for the prime minister. For the time being, all he can do is wait for an opportunity to go on the offensive, while emphasizing his reformist credentials by forging ahead with civil service and other reforms, and through smooth diplomatic activity.

Recently, Aso has placed particular importance on administrative reform.

In Wednesday's speech, Aso showed his enthusiasm about administrative reform by saying, "As I'm going to ask the public to take on a larger burden, it goes as a precondition that we should steadily implement administrative reforms and thoroughly eliminate wasteful government spending."

As Aso plans to raise the consumption tax rate in fiscal 2011, he believes he will not be able to win public support for the move unless he clearly shows his determination to carry out reform and provide a road map to that end.

Aso also hopes this strategy will counter the DPJ, which is likely to make reform of the nation's bureaucracy an election pledge.

But a government source said that implementing administrative reform runs the risk of becoming a "double-edged sword" for Aso.

By the end of the month, Aso plans to compile a timetable of public servant system reforms to be tackled by 2012 and to submit related bills to the Diet by the end of March.

However, the National Personnel Authority has refused to transfer its functions to a new cabinet-controlled entity in charge of personnel and management affairs relating to public servants, apparently judging Aso's political influence to be on the wane.

(Jan. 30, 2009)

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090130TDY03103.htm

Obama sees early meeting with Japanese PM Aso

Jan 29 12:00 PM US/Eastern

President Barack Obama is looking forward to an early meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, his spokesman said Thursday after the two leaders spoke by telephone.

Obama, in his first conversation with Aso since his inauguration last week, vowed "deep commitment" to the Japan-US alliance and vowed to work with Tokyo on the global economic crisis and the North Korean nuclear wrangle.

"President Obama said he looked forward to an early meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement on the "substantive and wide-ranging" call.

Earlier, the Japanese foreign ministry said Obama and Aso spoke for 10 minutes and agreed on the need to work to secure "peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region," a ministry statement said.

They also agreed to address "North Korean issues including the abduction issue and to further strengthen the Japan-US alliance," the foreign ministry said.

Japan is pressing Pyongyang to come clean on the fate of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese language and culture.

Aso, a conservative who is struggling in opinion polls, faced opposition criticism last year for failing to stop the United States from removing North Korea from a blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism.

The United States, under the Bush administration, took the action as part of a denuclearization deal, but Japan had wanted further movement on the abduction row.

Japanese politicians and media place immense significance on how Washington treats Tokyo compared with emerging powers, with some jittery that the Obama administration is more inclined to work with China than Japan.

Japan-US ties reached new heights during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi, who cultivated a close relationship with then-US president George W. Bush and took the landmark step of sending troops to Iraq.

Obama telephones Japanese prime minister

Thu Jan 29, 11:18 am ET

WASHINGTON – The White House says President Barack Obama spoke by telephone with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso on issues ranging from bilateral relations to the global economic crisis.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs said the call, which took place Wednesday night, was a "substantive and wide-ranging" conversation.

Gibbs said that Obama "expressed his deep commitment to the U.S.-Japan Alliance, which serves as the foundation for stability in the region." The spokesman said that Obama told Aso he looks forward to an early face-to-face meeting.

The Fat Lady is about to join in

Jan 29th 2009 | TOKYO




Even its own members reckon Japan’s ruling LDP faces annihilation

THE wave which first broke in earnest over Japan’s economy towards the end of last year now looks set to sweep away a political system dominated for half a century of almost unbroken power by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). That, at least, is now the view of parliamentarians of all stripes. This week, a poll by the Nikkei newspaper saw the government’s approval rating fall to 19%, abjectly low. Morbid LDP members admit that a party that has seen four prime ministers in as many years is not just bereft of ideas but has lost the stomach for a fight. The government, they say, will plop into the lap of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in an election that the prime minister, Taro Aso (pictured above), has to call by September.

Mr Aso deserves a scintilla of credit for trying. Though he assembled a cabinet of exceptional mediocrity last September, he expected to call a snap election while his approval ratings were still fairly high. Mr Aso was then faster than most to grasp the severity of the global slowdown, and that Japan, its economy driven by exports, would be disproportionately hit. More than once he has put off calling an election in order to confront the slowdown. He saw through stimulus measures and loan guarantees inherited from his predecessor. He announced a second stimulus, including a ¥2 trillion ($22 billion) cash handout to households. And he declared that nothing so frivolous as an election would disrupt preparations for the full budget for the fiscal year that begins in April, in which the economy would get another boost. This was to be Mr Aso’s three-stage rocket.

It has turned out to be a damp squib. The new spending is not large, yet promoting the proposals has consumed his political capital. For a start, instead of pushing the second stimulus through the Diet (parliament) at once, Mr Aso put it off until the session that began in January, so as not to divert energies from the annual budgeting ritual. Yet that has given more time for the public to turn against the handout as a gimmick, and for the opposition to make hay. Citing the handout, one prominent LDP member, Yoshimi Watanabe, a former financial-services minister who has long been unhappy about the lack of administrative and supply-side reforms, stomped out of the party on January 13th.

Mr Watanabe’s departure set off speculation about whether civil war within the LDP was about to break out into the open, with defections to a new political force. If only in this respect, the scale of Japan’s slump benefits Mr Aso for now, since it has stilled such a rebellion. The most powerful critic of the LDP’s lack of reform zeal, Hidenao Nakagawa, a former party secretary-general, now says that political realignment must happen only when voters demand a clearer direction. He will not, he says, be the one to fire the assassin’s shot at Sarajevo. And Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a former chief cabinet secretary, has not accepted Mr Watanabe’s entreaties to join him. Rather, Mr Shiozaki says, he and a few colleagues will push for a new stimulus package worth ¥10 trillion—this time tied to changes in highly regulated areas such as health care, education and agriculture.

Potential rebels share two other calculations. Mr Aso might yet bow out, allowing one more boundlessly self-regarding buggins to contest the next election for the LDP. The second is that as the chances rise of an outright victory by the DPJ in the next election, so the leverage of any third political force diminishes. A wholesale political realignment in Japan may have to wait until the DPJ attains office and stumbles.

In the meantime, says Tadamori Oshima, the LDP’s Diet-affairs chief in the lower house, the odds of Mr Aso’s passing his various packages have shortened. On January 27th the second stimulus package was bulldozed through. Until recently, a move led by Mr Nakagawa and Mr Shiozaki looked as if it might derail passage of the next fiscal year’s budget. To pass enabling legislation, the ruling coalition must use its “supermajority” in the lower house to override the opposition-controlled upper house. But the rebels had objected to language about the need to raise the consumption (sales) tax in 2011 in order to finance social welfare. The rebels backed down after it was made more explicit that the rise hinged not just on economic recovery, but on reducing the power of the bureaucracy. Mr Oshima now says he is certain that the supermajority, without which Mr Aso would have to resign, will hold.

This brings only a brief respite for the prime minister. The economy is worsening fast: in December year-on-year exports fell by 35%; surveys of consumer confidence are at all-time lows; while the central bank talks of an economic “emergency”. This week, the government announced convoluted plans for public funds to be used to buy shares in cash-strapped smaller companies. Though it has not been announced, it also wants to force big city banks to take public-capital injections, with no strings attached, rather than risk sending the stockmarket down further by issuing fresh shares. If Mr Aso plans further stimulus packages, publicising them now might only heighten the tooth-pulling pain of passing the current measures.

In his policy speech to the Diet on January 28th, the prime minister promised to bring Japan out of recession before the rest of the world, yet he gave few clues as to how. Admittedly, he expounded on the need for sweeping changes to the tax system, including raising the consumption tax. By mentioning the tax, Mr Aso meant to signal his commitment to responsible politics. Yet nothing he said hinted at tough structural changes to promote growth. Drained of influence and written off by his own party, a single weapon remains with Mr Aso: when to dissolve the Diet and call the election. As to when he will do that, says Mr Oshima, probably the prime minister’s closest and most important ally, only Mr Aso and God know.

Obama Calls Japan Premier Aso, Discusses U.S. Ties (Update3)

By Takashi Hirokawa and Sachiko Sakamaki

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso agreed to collaborate on alleviating the global economic crisis and achieving “peace and prosperity” in the Asia-Pacific region.

The leaders of the world’s two largest economies also discussed the fight against terrorism, the situation in the Middle East and North Korea’s abductions of Japanese nationals. Obama called Aso today in a conversation that lasted 10 minutes, according to a Japanese government statement distributed to reporters in Tokyo.

Obama and Aso vowed to “work together hand in hand” to secure “peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region,” through addressing issues such as the North Korean issues including the abduction issue, and further strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance,” the statement said.

“Our first step of cooperation with the Obama administration has started,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters after the telephone conversation.

Today’s call follows Obama’s conversations earlier this week with European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russia President Dmitri Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Aso and Obama will try to meet “soon,” the statement said.

Japan’s relations with the U.S. were strained last year when President George W. Bush removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Japanese officials including Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa called the U.S. move “regrettable” because it eliminated an incentive for North Korea to comply with its demand to account for the abductees.

Kidnapped Nationals

North Korea has acknowledged kidnapping 13 Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s. Japan says the communist regime abducted 17 people as part of a North Korean plan to train spies.

Japanese eagerness for an early summit meeting with Obama is related to widespread concern that the U.S. will favor China over Japan, said Tokyo University political scientist Kiichi Fujiwara.

“It comes from the sense of abandonment,” Fujiwara said in during a panel discussion on Obama and Japan at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo. “Aso wants to show the Japanese that they are not being abandoned. He also wants to show he’s taken seriously by Washington as a prime minister who will stay at least a few more months” in office.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Japan’s Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone Jan. 23 that their countries’ alliance was the “cornerstone” of U.S. policy in Asia. The comments contrast with a Foreign Affairs article she wrote a year ago saying that the U.S. relationship with China “will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world” this century.

Aso may visit the U.S. late next month or in March, Kyodo News said, citing unidentified sources.

To contact the reporter on this story: Takashi Hirokawa in Tokyo at thirokawa@bloomberg.net; Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo at Ssakamaki1@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: January 29, 2009 05:08 EST