Baker Tells Japan: Take Global Role : Policy: Move beyond ‘checkbook diplomacy,’ he advises in policy speech, and assume political responsibilities.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III today urged Japan to move beyond its economic power and play a more active role as a leader in international diplomacy.

“We recognize that Japan’s leaders, and its people, are now grappling with a difficult adjustment in Japan’s world role,” the secretary of state said in a speech to the Japan Institute for International Affairs. “ . . . Your ‘checkbook diplomacy,’ like our ‘dollar diplomacy’ of an earlier era, is clearly too narrow.”

In the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, Baker said, Japan should begin to take on “broader global responsibilities,” inviting Japanese leaders to work together with the United States not only in Asia but around the world.

The effect of Baker’s speech was to offer continuing close cooperation between the United States and Japan--while at the same time warning that the United States would be unhappy with any arrangement in which Japan offers only economic aid and tries to stay out of political controversy.

He suggested that Tokyo should begin to provide leadership not just in economic matters but also in “building democracy, respect for human rights, stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and in facing transnational challenges in areas such as the environment, narcotics and refugees.”

And he urged Japan to “step forward as a leader in confronting global issues, rather than relying on gaiatsu (foreign pressure) to justify decisions on economics or security affairs that are in its own interests.”

Baker’s aides distributed copies of his speech in advance of its delivery, portraying it as a major new statement of U.S. policy toward Asia in general and Japan in particular.

The secretary of state 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.

In the wake of Bush’s postponement, the secretary of state went out of his way to stress that the United States has not lost interest in Asia and does not plan to retreat from the world’s largest continent.

“America’s destiny lies across the Pacific as well as the Atlantic,” he said in the prepared text of his speech. “While we will make adjustments in our military posture (in Asia) to fit changing circumstances, we intend to firmly maintain our alliance relationships and our forward-deployed forces.”

He also said that both the United States and Japan need to guard against trade frictions and other tensions.

“Neither of us can afford the narrow self-indulgence of bashing, or kenbei ,” Baker said, referring to the Japanese term for dislike of America. “Neither of us will prosper in a world that retreats into protectionism.”

In particular, Baker said the Administration’s effort to create a North American Free Trade Area consisting of the United States, Canada and Mexico will not harm Japan. Rather, he said, NAFTA “will expand markets for Asian traders and investors, thus strengthening, not weakening, trans-Pacific links.”

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 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 ties.

In fact, this is 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 had come to Asia only four times.

Baker was last in Japan for a brief stop in August, 1989, and his only other trip here was with 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 home 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 Shumbun said Sunday that Japanese officials will press Bush to visit Japan “as early as January.”

Baker is expected to talk with Miyazawa, his new 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 Moscow.

Japan, which still does not have a World War II peace treaty with the Soviet Union, has been trying to persuade Moscow to return the four northern islands in the Kuril chain. The islands were occupied by Soviet troops at the end of World War II.

According to U.S. sources, Moscow, which would like substantial new Japanese aid and investment for its crisis-ridden economy, has asked the Bush Administration to serve as an intermediary to help work out a Soviet-Japanese deal on the 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 in his first speech as prime minister Friday.

Baker, in an article 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.