Baker in Tokyo, Seeks to Ease Japan’s Doubts

Secretary of State James A. Baker III arrived in Tokyo on Sunday for the Bush Administration’s first top-level meeting with new Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, hoping to ease doubts about U.S.-Japanese relations caused by the recent postponement of President Bush’s long-planned trip to Asia.

During two days of talks here, Baker will see Miyazawa, members of his newly appointed Cabinet and other senior Japanese leaders. It is the first stop of a weeklong trip in which the secretary of state will also visit South Korea and China.

“This is the most important Asia trip Baker ever made,” said one senior Administration official on Baker’s plane. He noted that with the end of the Cold War, the nations of Asia are in the process of working out new arrangements to govern their security and trade.

In fact, this will be one of the very few trips Baker has made to Asia as secretary of state. Since taking office in 1989, he has made 46 trips overseas but until now has come to Asia only four times.

The secretary of state was last in Japan for a brief stop in August, 1989, and his only other trip here was with President Bush at the time of Emperor Hirohito’s funeral in February, 1989.

When Bush announced last week that he was putting off a long-planned trip to Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia in order to stay in Washington, Miyazawa voiced disappointment. “It is regrettable, but we hope he can come as soon as possible,” the new Japanese prime minister said.

Since then, Bush has said he hopes to reschedule the visit to Tokyo, and U.S. officials have been trying to soothe hurt feelings in Asia and put the best face on the sudden postponement.

“It’s a hassle to have to reprogram a presidential trip, but I don’t see that as a significant issue,” one Administration official said. “In some ways, this may give everybody more time to adjust.”

The Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun said Sunday that Japanese officials will press Bush to visit Japan “as early as January.”

Baker is expected to talk with Miyazawa, Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe and other Japanese leaders about a series of regional issues in Asia, including Cambodia, China and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. They are also likely to talk about U.S. efforts to work out a Mideast peace settlement and Japan’s attempts to reach a new accommodation with the Soviet Union.

Japan, which still does not have a World War II peace treaty with the Soviets, has been trying to persuade Moscow to return what Japanese call the Northern Territories, four small islands in the southern Kurils off Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido. The islands were formerly Japanese territory but were occupied by Soviet troops at the end of World War II.

According to U.S. sources, the Soviet Union, which would like substantial new Japanese aid and investment for its crisis-ridden economy, has asked the Bush Administration to serve as an intermediary and see if it can help work out a deal between Moscow and Tokyo on the disputed islands.

In recent days, both Miyazawa and Baker have said that the ties between the United States and Japan are as important as any in the world.

“Relations with the United States are the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy,” Miyazawa told Parliament last week.

Baker, in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine last week, wrote that “nothing is more basic to the prosperity and security of the region, and indeed to the effectiveness of the post-Cold War system, than a harmonious and productive U.S.-Japan relationship.”

Both countries continue to hold out hopes for what they have called a “global partnership” in which the United States, the world’s military superpower, and Japan, its only rival as an economic superpower, team up and work hand in hand on foreign policy.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials acknowledge that these efforts at global partnership are undermined by economic frictions between the two countries. In his article, Baker called upon Japan to go further in opening up its markets to American products.

The secretary of state also suggested that Japan should do more in providing defense technology to the United States in return for U.S. military technology for Japan.

Both countries are nervous about the possible development of regional trade blocs in Asia and North America.

The Bush Administration is also under continuing congressional pressure to persuade Tokyo to pay more of the costs for stationing U.S. troops on Japanese soil.