Meeting between Mr. Itsunori Onodera, Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Hoshyar Zebari, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iraq

April 25, 2008

  On April 22 (Tue), Mr. Itsunori Onodera, Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, who was visiting Kuwait, to attend the Third Expanded Ministerial Conference of Neighbouring Countries of Iraq, met with Mr. Hoshyar Zebari, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iraq. The gist of the meeting is as follows:

1.  Mr. Onodera stated:

  It is an honor to meet Mr. Zebari again since the Istanbul Conference last November; Japan highly appreciates Iraq’s great efforts made in many fields; as mentioned in the Conference, the Government of Japan has decided to provide to Iraq yen loans amounting to about 350 million U.S. dollars to improve water supply facilities in the Kurdish regions and sewage facilities in Baghdad; There are new projects to be added to the existing 10 projects already signed which amount to about 2.1 billion U.S. dollars; This is an indication of the Japanese people’s wish for Iraq’s early reconstruction; the Government of Japan also intends to encourage Japanese companies in the oil and other sectors to start business in Iraq in the future.

2. In response, Mr. Zebari stated:

(1) Since the last meeting with Mr. Onodera, Iraq experienced many events. The situation is improving, and he is satisfied with such improvement.

(2) He highly appreciates Japan’s various kinds of assistance including reconstruction support, debt relief, contribution by the Ground Self-Defense Force and the Air Self-Defense Force, humanitarian assistance, various kinds of training, and accepting students from Iraq; Japan is an important political and trade partner.  Japan’s assistance is a true investment in Japan-Iraq relations, and in the future, it is expected that the relationship will be also strengthened in the field of trade.

Related Information (The Issue of Iraq)