Japan wavers on TMD cooperation with U.S.

WASHINGTON -- Despite the North Korean threat, Japan is taking an increasingly skeptical approach to a proposed missile defense system, U.S. officials said.

The officials said Tokyo has expressed doubts whether an anti-missile defense system is feasible against North Korea. Another question mark is whether a Japanese system modeled after the United States would harm relations with neighboring Russia, which asserts that the U.S. system violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The result, the officials said, is that Japan appears unlikely to expand missile defense cooperation with the United States. Tokyo and Washington signed an agreement last year to cooperate on missile defense research.

On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen began an Asian tour, which include meetings in Tokyo with Japanese leaders. The focus of Cohen's discussions will be on Japanese-U.S. cooperation in missile defense.

"Most of those discussions are about TMD," a senior Pentagon official said. "But I think it's also fair to say that Japan is increasingly asking questions about how the discussions are going with Russia as a whole and what American objectives are in relation to national missile defense. And as an ally, that's a very -- that an appropriate question and we'll do our best to answer this."

U.S. officials said Cohen is expected to tell Japanese leaders that North Korea remains as great a threat than ever despite efforts to suspend Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programs. They said the billions of dollars of aid offered to North Korea as well as its collapsing economy have not stopped that country's military buildup.

"The North Korean armed forces have just finished the heaviest winter training cycle that we have seen in recent years, showing that they certainly, in the midst of this terrible economic and agricultural situation, are devoting resources to a military capability," Adm. Dennis Blair, commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said.

Blair said North Korea is continuing to work on the Taepo Dong-2 program although it has observed its pledge not to test the missile, with a range of 6,000 kilometers. "I think the North Koreans are probably working on everything that doesn't violate existing commitments or can't be detected," Blair said. "I mean, I think they're churning away inside their laboratories doing the things they can do without testing it, and they're continuing to work on it as programs of that sort tend to do. But they have said that as long as we're continuing this round of talks, they're not, you know, going to be firing a missile, and we have great confidence that they have not done so and they're not preparing to in the near term."

In New York, the United States and North Korea began discussions of a proposed visit to Washington by a high-ranking North Korean official in April. The U.S. delegation is led by Charles Kartman, special U.S. envoy for the Korean Peninsula. The North Korean delegation is headed by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan.