INTERVIEW: Japan Should Lead Efforts toward U.S.-Iran Ceasefire

(The sixth paragraph should have read, “To the Middle East,…,” instead of as sent. A substitute story follows.) INTERVIEW: Japan Should Lead Efforts toward U.S.-Iran Ceasefire Tokyo, April 5 (Jiji Press)–Japan should take a proactive role in realizing an early ceasefire over military conflicts between the U.S.-Israeli forces and Iran by boosting multilateral cooperation, Jitsuro Terashima, chairman of the Japan Research Institute, has said. “What matters is how Japan can determine the position and strategy that should be taken, when the logic of power is rampant,” Terashima, who has experience in information gathering and analysis on the Middle East region, said in a recent interview with Jiji Press. “Too many Japanese people only see the Middle East in the context of energy,” Terashima said. “This is the limitation of Japanese people’s understanding of the region.” Terashima said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had visited him to exchange opinions on nuclear issues in 2010, when he was the Iranian ambassador to Japan. Araghchi told him that Iran wants to view Japan as a model that uses nuclear energy peacefully while owning a large amount of plutonium. “To the Middle East, Japan is a friend that has strong technological capabilities but has no ambitions linked to territorial conflicts or oil interests,” Terashima said. “Japan has a big role to play for the stability of the region.” On U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks at a summit with Japan last month about the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, Terashima said Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi should have said that the pre-emptive attack was a big mistake and that Japanese people suffered a lot because of it. At the U.S.-China summit being arranged for May, the two countries “are likely to reach an agreement on win-win strategic relations over Japan’s head,” Terashima said. “Now is the time for Japan to actively re-establish ties with the two nations,” he added. Safe navigation in the Persian Gulf is within Japan’s national interests, but the Self-Defense Forces should not be dispatched to help the U.S.-Israeli side, which started the conflicts with Iran, he said. The situation has posed “a test of Japan’s nonnuclear policy, multilateralism and U.N. diplomacy, which have been the main pillars of postwar Japan,” Terashima remarked. He continued that if Japan proposes a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for a ceasefire and denuclearization, over 160 countries would support it. “While General Assembly resolutions carry no binding power, having the United Nations function again and encouraging coordination by involving European nations, China and even Iranian reformists seems to be the only right thing Japan should do,” Terashima said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]