More assertive Japan becoming 'normal nation': US official
Posted: 10 February 2005 1458 hrs

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TOKYO : The growing assertiveness of Japan, which has just entered a new row with China over a disputed island, shows it is becoming a "normal nation," a senior US official said.

Japan, a close US ally, has been officially pacifist since its defeat in World War II but has sent troops to Iraq on a breakthrough mission.

"I think Japan in the course of its own internal domestic political discussions is moving in the direction of what a number of Japanese politicians and commentators call the idea of a normal nation," said John Bolton, US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

"A normal nation that is looking out after its own national security interests. I don't think that's anything that we have any difficulty with," Bolton told reporters on a visit to Tokyo.

Japan on Wednesday put under state control a lighthouse built by Japanese nationalists in the Senkaku Islands, an area that is uninhabited but near oil reserves and claimed by China and Taiwan.

China swiftly complained that the Japanese move was "illegal and invalid."

Bolton had no comment on the specific Japanese action. The US embassy in Tokyo said Washington's view was to take no position on sovereignty over the island chain.

But Bolton indicated understanding for Japan's general concerns about China.

"I think the subject of China increasing its military capabilities, particularly the prospect of power projection into the Pacific, is something we are looking at," Bolton said.

Relations have been increasingly strained between Japan and China, with Tokyo lodging a protest in November over the intrusion of a nuclear submarine in a disputed gasfield near the Senkaku Islands.

China has also been furious at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a Tokyo shrine dedicated to 2.5 million Japanese war dead including 14 top war criminals from World War II.

Bolton met during his visit here with Tokyo's nationalist Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who has vowed the municipal government will start economic activities on another island disputed with China.

- AFP