Forty minutes was all it took. On Monday in New York, Japan’s Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun sat down and came out with a joint statement saying their three countries stand firmly against economic coercion, arbitrary export restrictions included. China was the unnamed target, according to the report from Asia News Network on September 24.
The statement went beyond trade. The ministers agreed to work together on resilient supply chain strategies and welcomed progress in regional energy cooperation, citing “Powerr Asia” (Partnership on Wide Energy and Resources Resilience Asia), an energy procurement framework led by Japan. They also agreed to keep cooperating on maritime issues in the Arctic and on widening energy supplies. No memorandum of understanding was signed on those efforts, although arrangements for one had been made.
Taiwan and North Korea
With a U.S.-China summit due on Thursday, the three stressed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and repeated their opposition to any unilateral attempt to change the status quo. On North Korea, they committed to work toward its complete denuclearization and to the immediate resolution of the abductions of Japanese nationals.
Afterward Motegi and Rubio talked privately for about 10 minutes. A Japanese government source said they went over the situation in the Indo-Pacific. Motegi also raised the U.S. sanctions on Tomoko Akane, president of the International Criminal Court, telling Rubio they “are incompatible with Japan’s position.”
