Abe proposes regular 3-way summit among Japan, U.S., China+

WASHINGTON, April 17 Kyodo - Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed Friday that Japan, the United States and China hold a meeting of their leaders on a regular basis in the future.

''I personally believe that it's very useful to have a regular meeting of all
our heads of state of Japan, the United States and China,'' he said during a
Washington symposium.
Abe made the proposal as he spoke of the need for Japan and the United States
to jointly hold high-level dialogue with Australia and India as part of efforts
to ensure the peace and stability in Asia.
He traveled to China and South Korea soon after assuming office in 2006,
leading to a significant improvement in Tokyo's bilateral ties with Beijing and
Seoul which had been strained by his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi's annual
pilgrimage to a war-linked Tokyo shrine.
Abe also stressed the importance of further strengthening the alliance between
Japan and the United States through such efforts as signing a bilateral free
trade agreement.
Furthermore, the Japanese lawmaker suggested Tokyo and Washington join forces
in helping the world recover from the ongoing global recession stemming from
the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown.
''As the two largest economies in the world, the United States and Japan must
work together to lead the world economy out of this current crisis,'' he said.
Abe said it is necessary to bring the stalled Doha Round of multilateral trade
liberalization talks to a successful conclusion and to strike a deal on a new
global framework to fight global warming, both by the end of this year.
Later in the day, the former Japanese premier reiterated his hard-line stance
on North Korea, saying the reclusive state ''remains the biggest threat to
security in our part of the world'' as the recent rocket launch by Pyongyang
suggests.
''I support an attempt to foster direct dialogue between the U.S. and North
Korea. I do that on the condition that we stick to core principles, such as to
make the Korean Peninsula a nuclear-free area,'' he said in a speech at the
Brookings Institution.
''We can by no means allow (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il to call for
brinkmanship diplomacy, and we must make no compromise on the abduction
issue,'' Abe said.
''Japan, for its part, will have no normalization with North Korea until they
send back to Japan all the abductees who are still alive, and come clean on the
fate that the rest of them had to face,'' he said.
Japan and North Korea have clashed over the abduction issue and long-standing
disputes over the bilateral problem have been an obstacle to normalizing ties.
==Kyodo