U.S. President Barack Obama (R) meets with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC. The alliance between Japan and the United States is the "cornerstone" of East Asian security, Obama said Tuesday as he welcomed Aso to the White House.
The United States and Japan are expected in a new joint statement to state that cooperatively developed missile interceptors can be exported to third-party nations, Kyodo News reported on Tuesday (see GSN, May 26).
The bilateral statement is anticipated to be issued next week following planned security talks in Washington. The countries’ defense and foreign policy chiefs are to meet next Tuesday.
The United States wants authority to export the jointly produced Standard Missile 3 Block 2A interceptor to Europe for use in a planned NATO missile defense system. Japanese rules, though prohibit arms sales to outside countries with the exception of those weapons collaboratively built with the United States.
The statement on shared strategic objectives is also expected to cite the continued value of the two nations’ collaborative working group that focuses on combating potential chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks. The scope of cooperation between the two nations’ armed forces is now expected to encompass atomic emergencies such as the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Tokyo and Washington are also expected to call on regional power China to be more open about its military activities.
The Japanese-U.S. strategic common objectives were last modified in 2007.
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