WASHINGTON: The United States sent its top Asian diplomacy and security officials to South Korea and Japan to calm tensions between two US allies whose squabbling has frustrated efforts to deal with a troublesome North Korea and an increasingly assertive China.
The high-powered delegation from the White House, Pentagon and State Department departed on Monday and will be visiting the region shortly after the election of a new nationalist-leaning Japanese government in December and before Seoul inaugurates a new president in February.
Washington hopes South Korea and Japan can put a lid on spats over history and territory stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 occupation of Korea. US officials also seek to reassure Tokyo as it confronts almost daily challenges from China over which nation has sovereignty of disputed islets in a separate, more dangerous, territorial row with Beijing.
The long-simmering disputes erupted anew last year, plunging Tokyo’s ties with Seoul and Beijing to troubling lows and casting a cloud over President Barack Obama’s signature policy for East Asia — rebalancing security forces in the region — in part to cope with a surging China.
“We want to see the new Japanese government, the new South Korean government, all of the countries in Northeast Asia working together and solving any outstanding issues, whether they are territorial, whether they’re historic, through dialogue,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said last week.
Troubles between Asia’s second and fourth biggest economies are frustrating to Washington at a time when a defiant North Korea has tested a long-range rocket and may be poised to conduct its third
nuclear test.
In one of the final acts before Obama brings in a new national security team for his second term, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of Defence Mark Lippert and Daniel Russel, the National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs, will meet with officials in Seoul and Tokyo.
US officials regularly meet counterparts from the two countries, which have been American allies since the 1950s and together host most of the 80,000 US troops in Asia. But the antagonistic nationalism that flared up in Asian capitals last year makes this trip anything but routine.
The Japan-South Korea dispute intensified in August when President Lee Myung-bak became the first South Korean leader to set foot on islands claimed by both countries but controlled by Seoul. They are known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan.
Lee’s visit and his call for Emperor Akihito to go beyond earlier expressions of “deepest regrets” for Japan’s colonial rule followed South Korea’s last-minute cancellation of a bilateral agreement with Japan on sharing intelligence.
The troubles between Seoul and Tokyo coincided with a standoff between Japan and China over another cluster of islets, known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan.
The dispute sparked violent anti-Japanese protests in China last summer that damaged Japanese businesses in China. Last year’s protests have been followed by a consumer boycott and repeated incursions by Chinese boats and planes into seas and airspace around the islands, which are controlled by Japan.
The ships and aircraft that have appeared to challenge Japanese control of those waters and force Tokyo to end its refusal to acknowledge that a territorial dispute exists have been Chinese government vessels. So far China has stopped short of sending military vessels into disputed areas.
But analysts warn of the potential for miscalculation. Any Japan-China conflict could embroil the United States, which says that the islets are covered under the US-Japan security treaty — even though Washington takes no position on the sovereignty dispute. REUTERS
