Telephone Talks between Prime Minister Naoto Kan and US President Barack Obama

March 17, 2011
Japanese

Today (Thursday, March 17), Prime Minister Naoto Kan held telephone talks with Mr. Barack Obama, President of the United States of America. An outline of the talks is as follows.

President Obama expressed his deepest condolences and sympathies and asserted his profound trust in Prime Minister Kan’s leadership. On that basis, he once again informed Prime Minister Kan that the United States stood ready to provide not only an immediate response including in the form of support by U.S. forces stationed in Japan and rescue team activity, but also wide-ranging support activities such as dispatching nuclear experts and participating in medium- to long-term reconstruction.
In response, Prime Minister Kan expressed his deepest gratitude to the United States for its support and explained that the Government of Japan was now working at full stretch to deal with the nuclear power plant accidents by mobilizing all of its organizational resources including the Police and the Self-Defence Forces (SDF). Regarding the support being offered by the United States, Prime Minister Kan replied that Japan wished to discuss the matter well with the US side, and that close cooperation would take place on a continuous basis between the dispatched US nuclear experts and Japanese counterparts.

(*This is a provisional translation. The above date denotes the date of the issue of the original press release in Japanese.)

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