Japan Press Weekly

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2017 July 26 - August 1 [WORLD]

Abe gov’t left behind in global move seeking peaceful settlement of N. Korea issue

Akahata ‘current’ column

North Korea carries on with its nuclear weapons development and missile tests. How to deal with North Korea’s outrageous acts has become a serious issue. The U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes published an article in the July 7 issue, “ICBM test reveals few good options in dealing with N. Korea.”

The United States maintains 28,500 military personnel in South Korea and 50,000 in Japan. The U.S. military has also deployed a number of warships to this region. As a demonstration of military capability, the U.S. forces carried out missile firing exercises on the day following North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch. “But experts note that military conflict would be catastrophic for all sides,” the article points out.

Meanwhile, commenting on South Korea’s new president Moon Jae-in, the U.S. forces daily expresses “hope” for returning to some form of dialogue. The tone of the paper appears to reflect the mood of war weariness among U.S. soldiers who are its target readership.

Six former high-ranking U.S. government officials, including Willian Perry who served as former U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Clinton administration, jointly sent a letter to President Donald Trump in June. In the letter, what they demanded is to begin “discussions with North Korea”. They wrote, “Talking is not a reward or a concession to Pyongyang and should not be construed as signaling acceptance of a nuclear-armed North Korea. It is a necessary step to establishing communication to avoid a nuclear catastrophe.”

What Perry and other experts worry about is a danger that a war could start with miscalculation or misunderstanding, and the war could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. They insisted that a dialogue “is the only realistic option”.

Regarding the adoption of the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, Perry welcomed it in his statement on July 7 by saying that the treaty is “an important step towards delegitimizing nuclear war.” In stark contrast, the Abe administration opposes the treaty that can be an effective tool to press North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons through dialogue and is just inflaming tensions in the region. The Abe regime’s stance going against international consensus is pathetic.