Press Conference, 3 April 2007

Visit by Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Aso to the Republic of India for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit Meeting
Visit to Japan by Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont of the Kingdom of Thailand for the signing of an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)
Questions concerning the visit to Japan by Premier Wen Jiabao of the People's Republic of China
Questions concerning the reported kidnapping of two Japanese in the Republic of Paraguay
Questions concerning the comfort women issue

I. Visit by Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Aso to the Republic of India for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit Meeting

Deputy Press Secretary Tomohiko Taniguchi: Good afternoon and thank you for joining me. Let me start by making a few announcements.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Aso is now in the Republic of India. He is there to attend the fourteenth Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), held under the chairmanship of India, representing Japan as an observer nation. Of special note is that in his statement Foreign Minister Aso is going to convey what Japan views important to the countries in South Asia, which is divided into four parts, as follows:

Firstly, Japan welcomes that Afghanistan, from this summit onward, is now a full fledged member of the SAARC.

Secondly, Japan wants to run together with the SAARC nations in their assiduous pursuit of peace and prosperity and building societies based on such universal values as democracy, rule of law, and the respect of basic human rights, as the SAARC makes up one of the central pillars for Japan's own policy of creating an Arc of Freedom and Prosperity along the outer rim of the Eurasian continent.

Thirdly, in order for Japan and the SAARC to run really together, people to people exchanges should come atop the priority list. Hence Japan has put of late an additional US$7 million into the SAARC-Japan Special Fund to increase the frequency of student exchanges between the region and Japan. The fund just mentioned came into being as early as 1993 and had received, until the year 2002, a total of US$42 billion. With the new funding the Special Fund promises to gain renewed significance.

Fourth, Japan is going to ensure that it is prepared to help the SAARC to build connectivity in many respects: communication, transportation, and so on.

Those being the points Foreign Minister Aso will touch on in his statement. He will also say that the growth of the region can best be depicted as a great comeback of an area that was once a dominant power the world over. That much is on the SAARC.

II. Visit to Japan by Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont of the Kingdom of Thailand for the signing of an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)

Mr. Taniguchi: The next one is related to the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Japan and the Kingdom of Thailand. Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont of the Kingdom of Thailand came to Tokyo yesterday, Monday, 2 April. He is having a summit meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later today, Tuesday, 3 April, to sign the EPA.

An EPA, by definition, is much wider in coverage and deeper in penetration in the signatories' economies than an ordinary free trade agreement (FTA). The Japan-Thailand EPA, which follows the preceding five EPAs that Japan has so far forged with the Republic of Singapore, the United Mexican States, Malaysia, the Republic of the Philippines, and the Republic of Chile; the last one of which came into being only last month.

In terms of coverage, it liberalizes more than 90 percent of the two-way trade.

Closer in the details: First, on the Thai side, it abolishes, over the subsequent decade, all the tariffs for steel products imported from Japan and in the next six to seven years it does the same with auto parts from Japan. Secondly, on the Japanese side, it abolishes all the tariffs for such Thai agricultural products as mangos, mangosteens, durians, shrimp, and shrimp products, while reducing tariffs for chicken and chicken-related products.

Furthermore, it covers areas such as customs procedures, mutual recognitions as to electric and electronic products, some service sectors, investment, intellectual property rights, as well as competition policies. The EPA also enables Japan to accept Thai specialists in cooking, music, the sport of boxing, traditional dance, etc.

The Government of Japan is committed to forging EPAs and FTAs as quickly as possible when necessary. The newest one will surely make yet another milestone for that policy.

Back to Prime Minister Chulanont's visit: he will be granted an honorary doctorate degree in engineering tomorrow, Wednesday, 4 April, by Tokai University, which has had a close association with a Thai university where Prime Minister Chulanont has long been chairman of the trustees.

III. Questions concerning the visit to Japan by Premier Wen Jiabao of the People's Republic of China

Q: I have two questions. Firstly, has the schedule for the visit to Japan by Premier Wen Jiabao of the People's Republic of China been decided on yet?

Secondly, originally Premier Wen Jiabao's visit was scheduled to be from the 11 April until the 15 April, but this has been changed to being from 11 April until 13 April. What is the reason for the change in dates?

Mr. Taniguchi: In terms of the schedule of the upcoming visit to Japan by Premier Wen Jiabao of the People's Republic of China, as you pointed out, it is going to be between the 11 April and 13 April. As to the details, I do not have the detailed itinerary handy but you will soon be able to know what Premier Wen will be doing when and where. Premier Wen will be traveling to the Kansai area to address the business community there, and before setting off to Kansai he is scheduled to make an address to the Diet members. That much is what I can tell you at the moment, but that is only because I do not have his detailed itinerary at present.

Your second question was regarding why the scheduled visit seems to be shortened. I have to say that during the negotiation process between the two sides, the Chinese and the Japanese side, they were talking about "several days" as to the duration of Premier Wen's stay in Japan. "Several days" could range, obviously, from two or three days to four or five days. The end result was that both sides, the Chinese side and the Japanese side, agreed upon making it three days instead of four or five days, so there was not such a thing as shortening the schedule. It was only because they did not have any agreement prior to their coming to this decision of making this trip a three-day trip. In other words, there was not anything agreed in advance of the agreement that both nations came to agree on.

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IV. Questions concerning the reported kidnapping of two Japanese in the Republic of Paraguay

Q: Do you have any updates or any information on the reported kidnapping of two Japanese in the Republic of Paraguay?

Mr. Taniguchi: I have only been aware of the reports but, given the nature, no information should go into the public domain at the moment.

Q: Is that a rule of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: not to give any information to ensure the safety of the kidnapped people?

Mr. Taniguchi: There is no such rule per se that can be applicable to things such as this. That is because of the nature of the incident that involves the lives of people.

V. Questions concerning the comfort women issue

Q: On a totally different topic, the recent foreign ministerial meeting between Japan and the Republic of Korea, between Foreign Minister Aso and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Song Min-soon of the Republic of Korea; the issue of comfort women came up during the talks and I was wondering if the Japanese Government is concerned in any way that this comfort women issue was taken up in the foreign ministerial talks, and if the Japanese Government or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is concerned that this comfort women issue might be a number two issue that might contribute to the deterioration of bilateral ties?

Mr. Taniguchi: The answer is we sincerely hope it will not. The reasons are multifold.

Firstly, there was a fund set up jointly by the Japanese Government and by Japanese private individuals to help support the victims of the comfort women case. The fund, set up in the early 1990s, tried to do its utmost in countries such as the Republic of Korea, the Republic of Indonesia, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and so on. I understand they closed their shop concluding that the maximum amount of work had already been done by the fund. Some say that the fund is not an official one, it is just a private entity; that is only telling a small portion of the truth. The primary purpose of the fund was to give compensation money to the victims and, if you look at the budget, the compensation money was largely funded by the donations from Japanese private citizens. But, as for the running cost of the fund, it came from the Government and the initial funding also came from the Japanese Government's budget. That much made the fund pretty much an official one.

In addition, when the victim received compensation money from this fund, much more importantly, it came with a letter signed by the then Japanese Prime Minister, like the late Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. In that letter each Prime Minister stated clearly that, "I, as Prime Minister of Japan, am sending this letter to you, the victim of this case, with heartfelt apologies and sense of remorse." About this I should also mention that there are some people who say that the letter means nothing, and I would like to be opposed to that assertion by saying that, as pointed out, the letter went out as an official letter signed by the then Japanese Prime Minister, with his remarks as prime minister in it. That is point number two.

Number three: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has repeatedly made it clear during the Diet session and to the members of the Japanese press and beyond that he has endorsed the 1993 statement issued by the then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono. And, not only endorsing the 1993 statement, he also expressed his own personal feeling and views about this issue by saying that he felt very much sorry about the whole incident and he also said, if my memory serves me right, something like, "If I try to put myself into the victims' shoes, the situation that they had to undergo should have been horrible, horrendous." That is the kind of thing that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mentioned and that much, I think, has been conveyed fairly well to the wider audience, including the audience in the Republic of Korea. I sincerely hope that that much can be well understood by all people concerned and I do not really want this issue to be addressed in such a way as you depict it.

Q: The Japanese Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; what kind of moves or efforts would they do so that the wider audience in the Republic of Korea and other countries would understand Japan's position? Basically just explaining Japan's position?

Mr. Taniguchi: To explain when necessary and if need be is probably the most important thing for us to do and I understand that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has done exactly that.

Q: So basically, at the moment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the Japanese Government for that matter, feels that it has done its part and that the comfort women issue is basically under control and it is not going to be a major hot topic between--?

Mr. Taniguchi: I am not sure if it is an appropriate way to describe this issue as something that can be "under control" of the Japanese Government. What the Japanese Government can do and should do is to continue to express the feeling that many people in this country have been ashamed by the wrongdoings of their fathers' generation. When it comes to the case of a lady from the Commonwealth of Australia, whose name is Mrs. Jan Ruff-O'Herne; cases such as that are very much unspeakable in their nature. By the way, that special case needs a little bit more explanation because, right after the war, the chief perpetrator of that terrible crime was actually punished by the war criminal court headed by the Dutch judges and the chief perpetrator was sentenced to death after the war. But, setting that aside, we can only say that this sort of thing should not be repeated and, as was said by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, if you try to imagine what sort of terrible circumstances that many of those women had to endure one can only feel sorry.

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