National / Politics & Diplomacy| ANALYSIS
Summit kept to script that sidestepped many issues
by Eric Johnston
Staff Writer
Apr 24, 2014
Article history
High-level summits like Thursday’s between U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are mostly scripted affairs, with a clearly defined agenda revolving around the most pressing, or politically important, issues.
The Japan-U.S. summit covered America’s military commitments to Japan under the bilateral security treaty, including standing tough on the Senkakus and North Korea. They also covered the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact.
But in any summit, there are always pressing issues that are downplayed, left off the agenda or deemed not worthy of high-level attention.
The most difficult aspect of the summit was the TPP negotiations. Whatever is or is not eventually announced by the U.S. and Japan, Obama will return to Washington to strong opposition to the pact in a Congress that, while concerned about beef, pork and the other points of contention making headlines in Japan, is perhaps even more worried about other issues.
“There are roughly 30 votes in the House, out of 435 total, by members who represent a district with any real prospect of improving their agricultural exports by opening up the Japanese market. Agriculture is a factor, but it’s not a very big factor in congressional opposition,” Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida who serves on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a telephone press conference earlier this week.
Lori Wallach, director of the Washington-based Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, lists the most contentious TPP-related issues for Congress, which were downplayed or not discussed by Obama in his meeting with Abe.
“Even if the continuing bilateral negotiations resolve U.S.-Japan auto and agricultural trade issues, there are scores of other deep deadlocks in TPP negotiations,” she said, rattling off issues ranging from disputes on medicine patent and reimbursement policies to environment and labor standards.
Some 60 U.S. senators and 230 U.S. representatives have insisted the TPP include enforceable disciplines on currency manipulation. But other TPP countries oppose this, and to date the issue had not been addressed, Wallach added.
Also downplayed was the fact that the TPP is unlikely to be approved by Congress if Obama does not receive special negotiating authority from the legislative body to do a deal. There is strong opposition in both parties to giving him such authority, and few in Washington believe it will happen this year.
“Fast track (trade promotion) authority from Congress is highly unlikely. Fast track has been announced as dead until the (November congressional) elections. But I think it’s dead after the elections as well,” said Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman, who serves on a committee dealing with international trade.
Also left off the summit agenda were proposals for resolving tensions over historical issues between Japan and South Korea, and Japan and China.
Anger toward Japan, and particularly Abe, over the “comfort women” issue in particular is causing problems not only in East Asia, but also in the United States, including in Glendale, California, where human rights groups persuaded the city to erect a memorial statue to the wartime sex slaves.
Some U.S. municipal and state governments have passed resolutions condemning Japan’s stance on the comfort women, while extreme right-wing Japanese politicians are demanding the statues be removed.
While the State Department says these statues and resolutions are local issues, they make it more difficult for both Tokyo and Washington to move forward on larger issues of regional cooperation.
Obama also offered U.S. support regarding Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea. But neither leader appears to have raised Japan’s other so-called abduction issue: the more than 400 children of Japanese and American parents who were allegedly taken from the U.S. to Japan by an estranged Japanese spouse without permission.
During her Senate confirmation hearing last year, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy said she was concerned about the issue. The Hague Treaty on child abductions, which specifies that nations are required to facilitate the return of children taken by any parent away from the country marked as their usual residence, came into effect in Japan only on April 1, but does not apply to children abducted before then.
Japan eyes change over snatched kids
February 20, 2013
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130219/japan-eyes-change-over-snatched-kids
Agence France-PresseFebruary 19, 2013 23:00
Japan eyes change over snatched kids
(Globalpost/GlobalPost)
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be under pressure when he meets US President Barack Obama this week to pledge progress on a long-stalled treaty to prevent the snatching of children by a Japanese parent in international divorce cases.
Abe is expected to promise that Japan will follow through on a decades-old pledge to ratify the Hague Convention on child abduction, giving some legal muscle to hundreds of foreign fathers — including Americans, French and Canadians — kept apart from their half-Japanese children.
“Those are only the reported cases,” French Senator Richard Yung told AFP during a recent trip to Tokyo to press officials on the issue.
Japan is the lone member of the G8 industrialised nations — the others being the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia and Canada — not to have adopted the 32-year-old international treaty.
Key allies including the US, France and Britain have long demanded Tokyo step into line.
Diplomats say ratification of the Hague Convention could come during Japan’s current parliamentary session, which ends in the summer.
That would make it the 90th state to adopt the treaty, which is aimed at securing “the prompt return of children wrongfully removed or held” in another treaty state.
“These cases are particularly cruel — birthday or Christmas presents are returned,” said Yung, who added that he met a vice foreign affairs minister but was refused a sit down with Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki.
The changes would also offer hope to hundreds of thousands of Japanese fathers who face similar estrangement under domestic custody laws.
Japan is unique among major industrialised nations when it comes to the children of estranged parents.
Courts do not recognise joint custody — for foreigners or Japanese nationals — and almost always order that children live with their mothers, leaving desperate fathers with almost no recourse to see their children.
Many lose touch with their offspring if the ex-spouse blocks access, a common occurrence due to the widely held opinion that child rearing is a task for women, while men earn the money.
Yasuyuki Watanabe, the deputy mayor of a small Japanese town, has not seen his daughter in years. After the country’s devastating 2011 quake-tsunami disaster, he says he tried to make contact with the now five-year-old girl.
“And my wife called the police on me,” he said.
Michael, a foreigner who has lived in Japan for three decades, had a messy divorce that ultimately saw two of his three kids tell a Japanese court they had no wish to ever see their father again.
That, he says, was the product of “brainwashing” by his ex-spouse. Michael, which is not his real name, has never met his two grandchildren.
Sometimes, judges do order the custodial parent to send photos of a child to their former spouse, or to allow a short monthly visit.
But police almost never intervene when those orders are commonly ignored.
Ratification of the convention would not automatically change Japanese laws, but it offers hope for hundreds of thousands of Japanese men cut off from their kids, including Watanabe who said he recently met with the justice minister.
“I told him how the judicial system is malfunctioning and that judges encourage these abductions, whether it is international or in Japan,” he added.
But ratifying the treaty alone is no silver bullet and there are fears that future changes to domestic laws could lack both scope and substance, warned Yung, who cited public opinion as the biggest weapon in winning the fight for access.
Richard Delrieu, president of advocacy group SOS Parents Japan, has not seen his own half-Japanese son in years and also said that ratifying the treaty alone won’t change things overnight.
“This situation is not worthy of a great country like Japan,” he said.
jlh-pb/hg/ao/pdh
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130219/japan-eyes-change-over-snatched-kids
Abe to meet Obama in Washington on February 22
February 18, 2013
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/abe-to-meet-obama-in-washington-on-feb-22
Abe to meet Obama in Washington on Feb 22
POLITICS FEB. 16, 2013 – 03:05PM JST ( 10 )
TOKYO —
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will hold talks with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Feb 22, with North Korea high on the agenda.
Abe will leave Tokyo next Thursday on a four-day U.S. visit, accompanied by Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, who is planning to meet new U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news briefing on Friday.
Abe and Obama will use their first summit to “exchange views on wide-ranging issues, not only bilateral relations but also the situation in the Asia-Pacific region including the North Korean question, and to clearly demonstrate an enhanced Japan-U.S. alliance,” he said.
Abe, who took power after his conservative party won an election landslide in December, is expected to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade initiative amid antipathy at home toward the U.S.-led scheme.
The two leaders held telephone talks on Thursday and agreed to seek tougher sanctions on North Korea two days after the communist country carried out its third nuclear test in defiance of international opposition.
© 2013 AFP
Hague pact on fast track, Abe to tell Obama
January 17, 2013
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20130117a9.html
Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013
Hague pact on fast track, Abe to tell Obama
Kyodo
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will tell U.S. President Barack Obama when they meet, probably in February, that he wants to speed up the procedure for Japan to join the international treaty on settling cross-border child custody disputes, sources said Wednesday.
The previous administration led by former Democratic Party of Japan leader Yoshihiko Noda had already made participation in the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction an international commitment.
The Abe team is aiming to submit a bill to the Diet early this year to endorse the convention, which sets rules for the prompt return of children under 16, taken or retained by one parent following the failure of international marriages, to the country of their habitual residence.
Domestic legislation is necessary to join the convention, but a related bill was scrapped when the Lower House was dissolved in November.
Among the Group of Eight nations, Japan is the only one yet to join the convention and has been facing calls from the United States and European countries to get on board soon.
22 U.S. Senators Sign Letter to President Obama
November 6, 2009
22 U.S. Senators have signed a letter calling upon President Obama to take action on the international child abduction issue during his trip next week to Japan to meet with Prime Minister Hatoyama.
Here are links to the press releases from Senator Boxer’s and Senator Corker’s offices:
Below is a copy of the actual letter. We especially want to recognize the exceptional efforts of the office of Senator Barbara Boxer in taking the intiative on this and garnering bipartisan support for this letter.
11.5.09 Letter to President Obama P1
11.5.09 Letter to President Obama P2
11.5.09 Letter to President Obama P3
Children's Rights Council of Japan (Japan child abduction) 