Politics

Kishida meets new ambassador to reaffirms US-Japan alliance

Tokyo, Feb 4 (EFE).- Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met the new United States ambassador Friday and reaffirmed the importance of their bilateral cooperation amid challenges in the region.

The meeting with Rahm Emanuel comes in a context of regional tension due to the seven weapons tests carried out by North Korea in January, added to an increasingly assertive China in the waters of the region.

Since the arrival of Joe Biden to the US presidency, both countries have insisted, in the face of China’s military rise in the area, on the need to strengthen their cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and also extend it to other allies such as India and Australia.

During their meeting, Kishida and Emanuel also discussed the kidnappings of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang between 1977 and 1983, one of the country’s usual demands, and agreed to continue working to solve them.

In the economic sphere, Emanuel praised the Japanese leader’s economic policy, a “new capitalism” that aims to achieve a more equitable distribution of wealth, and compared it to Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan.

Emanuel said he would work “from the heart” in pursuit of the strong alliance between both countries and for the Indo-Pacific region, as he expressed in statements collected by the Kyodo news agency.

Shortly before the meeting with Kishida, the new US ambassador held a meeting with the secretary general and spokesman for the Japanese Cabinet, Hirokazu Matsuno, with whom he discussed bilateral cooperation on the military and economic fronts.

Emanuel was appointed the new ambassador to Japan by the Biden administration and landed in Tokyo on Jan. 23, after the departure of his predecessor, William Hagerty, in 2019, and after serving as mayor of the city of Chicago and as chief of staff for the Barack Obama administration. EFE

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