Japan is widening dialog to ease tensions

Japan is widening dialog to ease tensions

By Pierre-Antoine Donnet

TOKYO (AFP): Japan is widening contacts with other Asian
countries to strengthen security dialog and reduce the risks of
armed conflict sparking in the region.

Regular defense dialogs promoting "confidence-building
measures" will be taken a step further with a meeting in December
of military officers from 13 Asia-Pacific nations to create a new
venue for post-Cold War security dialog.

Under the auspices of the National Institute for Defense
Studies (NIDS), funded by the Japanese Defense Agency, the
unprecedented conference follows the July ASEAN Regional Forum
(ARF) in Bangkok, also a precedent for regional dialog.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and Thailand. The ARF groups foreign ministers of ASEAN
with counterparts from key trading partners and major regional
players like China, the European Union, Japan, Russia and the
United States.

Under the new Japanese initiative, middle-ranking officers --
majors and lieutenant colonels -- will come from Australia,
Canada, China, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, the United
States and the ASEAN six.

They will stay three weeks in Japan to discuss regional
security concerns. This year, Vietnam, a candidate for ASEAN
membership, Myanmar and India have asked to join the 1995
meeting, and their prospects are good.

"We support the idea," Major General Hiromichi Muromoto, vice
president of the NIDS, told AFP.

Japan has also organized for the past six years an annual
seminar on security which groups senior officers from ASEAN
countries.

"There is almost no day when we don't welcome foreign
visitors, very often Asians, with whom we talk openly on security
matters," Muromoto stressed.

China, whose military development program disturbs Tokyo,
regularly sends military officials to Japan.

The director-general of the Japanese Defense Agency,
Tokuichiro Tamazawa, announced Tuesday that he had invited his
Chinese counterpart, Defense Minister Chi Haotian, to renew high-
level defense contacts broken off after the 1989 Tiananmen Square
massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing.

Security dialogs are especially important for Japan because,
unlike North America or western Europe, Asia's potential sources
of conflict are numerous: China and Taiwan, multinational
disputes over the Spratly and Paracel islands, the two Koreas,
and the India-Pakistan rivalry.

"If we want consolidate stability in the region, it is
necessary for each country to feel free from any military threat.

The first stage is, therefore, greater transparency and more
dialog," said Gotaro Ogawa, deputy director-general of the
foreign ministry's intelligence and analysis bureau.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had generated great
uncertainty, especially over its nuclear arsenal.

But despite the long dispute over the Kuril islands, occupied
by Russia and claimed by Japan, Moscow and Tokyo have gone ahead
with regular exchanges on their military plans.

The crisis triggered by the suspected nuclear arms program of
North Korea in turn has produced triangular cooperation among
Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing, Japanese diplomats note.