Press Conference, 5 September 2006

Visit to Japan by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
Visit by Mr. Katsutoshi Kaneda, Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, to New York
Entry into force of the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP)
Visit of Mr. Shotaro Yachi, Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, to Seoul
Creation of the Office for Coordination with Hokkaido (provisional name)
Official Development Assistance to the Republic of Tajikistan
Question concerning the visit to Japan of Mr. Christopher Hill, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Follow-up question concerning the creation of the Office for Coordination with Hokkaido (provisional name)
Questions concerning negotiations over the Azadegan oil fields in Iran
Follow-up questions concerning the visit by Mr. Yachi to Seoul
Question concerning the possibility of a nuclear test by North Korea
Follow-up question concerning the entry into force of ReCAAP

I. Visit to Japan by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

Deputy Press Secretary Tomohiko Taniguchi: Good afternoon, let me begin.

First about the visits of foreign and domestic leaders. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, will visit Japan from Thursday 14 September to 16 September. This visit was initiated by Chief Obasanjo, who is a renowned leader in Africa, who also had strong wishes to express his appreciation for the Japanese aid to his country in person directly to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi while he is still in office. Chief Obasanjo has thus far visited Japan more than 10 times.

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II. Visit by Mr. Katsutoshi Kaneda, Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, to New York

Mr. Taniguchi: Mr. Katsutoshi Kaneda, Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, is leaving today, Tuesday, 5 September, for New York, where he is attending the 59th annual UN Department of Public Information and NGO Conference. This year's conference is focused on human security, and Mr. Kaneda is making a speech, representing a government long committed to advocating the importance of human security.

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III. Entry into force of the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP)

Mr. Taniguchi: About the entry into force of a new anti-piracy initiative whose initial idea actually came from Japan back in 2001. It is called The Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia, the abbreviation of which is ReCAAP, and that entered into force yesterday, Monday the 4th of September.

Unlike the information sharing system long maintained by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), which is part of the International Chamber of Commerce, the ReCAAP, as an inter-governmental organization, aims at providing each member government's law enforcement authority with specific information as to which ship has done what in which area as swiftly as possible, so that cooperation among the member authorities will be made more seamless in order for them to better check the pirate activities.

The whole process to create this framework indeed started when Prime Minister Koizumi urged his ASEAN and other colleagues to think hard to create such a framework back in November 2001.

The ReCAAP Governing Council will meet in November, and the Information Sharing Center, which is central to the framework, will start its operation, based in Singapore, in due course.

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IV. Visit of Mr. Shotaro Yachi, Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, to Seoul

Mr. Taniguchi: Let me say that Mr. Shotaro Yachi, Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, is soon leaving Japan for Seoul, the Republic of Korea (ROK) to have the Third Japan-ROK Vice-Ministerial Strategic Dialogue with his counterpart, Mr. Yu Myung-hwan, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow they will have talks, and I am sure they will cover a broad range of issues of their mutual concern, but as usual they have preset no specific agendas.

Related to this, you may be aware that today is the second day for the bilateral talk between Japan and the ROK on the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and how best to inform one another on the maritime research activities each government will conduct. I do not have much else to tell you about what they have or have not talked about. It will not be long, however, before you will be hearing of the results.

V. Creation of the Office for Coordination with Hokkaido (provisional name)

Mr. Taniguchi: I am making a simple announcement that on the 11th of this month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will create what is for the moment called the Office for Coordination with Hokkaido (provisional name). The office is not going to be a separate unit, but one in the Russian Division of the European Affairs Bureau. The idea is to promote intensive exchanges of information and knowledge between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a host of Hokkaido-based regional authorities. In so doing, it is to be hoped among other things that such serious incidents as the killing and capturing of Japanese fishermen that has taken place of late will never happen again.

VI. Official Development Assistance to the Republic of Tajikistan

Mr. Taniguchi: One more, on official development assistance (ODA) projects. Of note is what the Japanese Government is going to do for the Republic of Tajikistan.

Today on the 5th of September in the capital city of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, the exchange of letters is now taking place at this hour between the Japanese Government representative and His Excellency Talbak Nazarov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tajikistan.

That is to give a grant aid, that is up to 595 million Japanese yen, or more than US$5 million, to Tajikistan to be used to construct a road connecting a city called Dousti, which is a city with a population of 10,000, and Nizhny Pyandzh, which is a point of border crossing between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

The Government of Japan, when it held Foreign Ministerial Dialogue called "Central Asia and Japan" earlier in June this year, made it clear that it would do its utmost to provide the landlocked countries of Central Asia with a route connecting them with Afghanistan and then with access to the Indian Ocean.

Transportation holds the key for the development of Central Asian economies, and this newly agreed grant aid is expected to literally pave the road for the better transportation system.

Incidentally, at Nizhny Pyandzh, a border crossing point between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, you must cross a river called the Oxus River, which some may recall is the river famously crossed by Alexander the Great during his conquests, to go back and forth between the two countries. Currently a US Army Corps of Engineers team is busy building a steel bridge there, which is due to open by summer 2007.

You can see that the new aid package I have just introduced is yet another attempt for Japan and the United States to help rebuild the economies in that part of the world.

VII. Question concerning the visit to Japan of Mr. Christopher Hill, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Q: Mr. Christopher Hill, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, held talks with officials here last night and today. We have not heard anything substantive that has resulted from that, but how does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs view those talks and any prospects for any resumed negotiations involving North Korea?

Mr. Taniguchi: That is a legitimate question but I am not allowed to say much about it at the moment. The talk is still going on. Mr. Kenichiro Sasae, Director-General of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, met Mr. Hill over dinner last night, and obviously they talked a lot about how best to pull North Korea once again into the framework of the Six-Party Talks; how important it will remain for North Korea to be faithful to the resolution that was just passed in September; and the possible danger that North Korea is again going to provoke the international community with the experiments or launches of missiles. Those things should not happen. Those points, I must say, must have been reiterated and emphasized yet again. But there is not much else I can talk about.

VIII. Follow-up question concerning the creation of the Office for Coordination with Hokkaido (provisional name)

Q: On a different topic, you mentioned about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Office for Coordination with Hokkaido (provisional name). Before this kind of office or this kind of framework has been set up, what has the Ministry of Foreign Affairs been doing? Basically, it is because of the incident that this office has been established.

Mr. Taniguchi: The incident gave us a wakeup call about how important it is for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a variety of regional authorities in Hokkaido to share information and knowledge about Japan-Russia relationships, but it is not necessarily only related to the incident or possible incident, because of late the two countries, the Russian Federation and Japan, have intensified their relationship in many respects, including environmental cooperation and other issues. You may recall that cooperation between the two coast guards of Russia and Japan also has been intensified over the last couple of years. Those are the developments that have urged us to create such an office within this Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Previously there have been a number of people who came from the Hokkaido authorities to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs team, and that was a useful arrangement for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Hokkaido authorities to share the information, but given the intensity of the dealings between Japan and Russia, we have decided to create this office, tentatively within the Russian Division.

IX. Questions concerning negotiations over the Azadegan oil fields in Iran

Q: The clock is ticking on the negotiations between the government-owned oil company and the Islamic Republic of Iran on the Azadegan fields. Iran has indicated that if a deal is not cut soon, it will let the People's Republic of China or Russia have a crack at it, and the French Republic has now apparently expressed interest in the fields. What is the latest that you know about that, and are you confident that there will be a deal struck in Japan's interest?

Mr. Taniguchi: There have been a number of reports, you may know, carried by the international newspapers saying that Iran is reportedly close to concluding an agreement over the Azadegan oil field development, and you may also recall that there has been a dispute over mine clearance and related development costs that has prevented progress on the project of Azadegan. I do not know whether it is really close for the two companies, if the Japanese company and its counterpart company in Iran are really getting closer to forging a deal. The bottom line is that it is a private deal, and the Government has no position whatsoever at the moment about the likelihood of the deal coming into force. That is the view that I have now.

Q: But have there been any Government positions stated as to whether this should go ahead, even in the face of possible economic sanctions or the reported pressure from the United States for Japan not to conclude this deal?

Mr. Taniguchi: Neither the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed anything about it.

X. Follow-up questions concerning the visit by Mr. Yachi to Seoul

Q: You mentioned Mr. Yachi is going to the ROK from today. I understand that the original schedule was from tomorrow. I was wondering if the sudden change in his schedule means that he is going to hold some important talks?

Mr. Taniguchi: Mr. Yachi, as you may agree with me, is one of the most relaxed people whom I have ever known, and he wants to get engaged in a very much casual talk for as long as possible with his counterpart.

Q: Just to follow that up, perhaps you can say something about assessing the state of relations between Tokyo and Seoul. You have these EEZ talks going on, you have Mr. Yachi going up there; this comes just before President Roh Moo Hyun is supposed to go to Washington, D.C. Would you say that relations have slightly warmed in the past month, or is it just a coincidence that all these things are now?

Mr. Taniguchi: That is my view, and that is what everyone on both sides, I think, has hoped for many years, and now also. On the side of the Government of Japan, we have maintained that our door has never shut, our doors are wide open always, and in terms of the bilateral summit dialogue, it is being welcomed all the time, and it should be expected that it will take place sooner rather than later.

XI. Question concerning the possibility of a nuclear test by North Korea

Q: I do not know if this was addressed at a previous briefing. There was a report over the weekend I think that if North Korea were to set off a nuclear device or nuclear test, that Japan would declare a national emergency along the lines of a major earthquake happening. Has that been confirmed? What can you tell us about that?

Mr. Taniguchi: There is no way for me to confirm or deny that. Basically, I do not know. But the thing is, it is going to be posing an even more serious danger to the international community than the ones posed by the multiple launches of the missiles. We have to create another operation emergency room within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and start up a close coordination between the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and between Washington, D.C. and Tokyo, yet again.

XII. Follow-up question concerning the entry into force of ReCAAP

Q: Regarding the anti-piracy pact, I understand that the Republic of Indonesia and Malaysia are not part of this. What is Japan's take on this outcome? How does it see the non-participation of Malaysia and Indonesia as affecting the effectiveness?

Mr. Taniguchi: I understand that the importance of the agreement has been widely shared by all of the members, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and China, three of the countries that have not signed or ratified it. It is just a matter of time, as I understand it, for those countries to enter into the agreement, and for them to become full-fledged members of the agreement. But it seems to be taking time for governments such as Indonesia and Malaysia internally to pass that agreement so that it will be ratified by their legislative bodies.

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