Japan, U.S. Agree to Cooperate over China, N. Korea, Russia

Tokyo, Oct. 9 (Jiji Press)--The Japanese and U.S. defense chiefs have agreed to work together with each other and regional partners even more closely to deal with increasing activities around Japan by China, North Korea and Russia.

In their first telephone talks Tuesday, Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also affirmed that they will strengthen the deterrence and response capabilities of the Japan-U.S. alliance.

Austin told Nakatani that the United States will make efforts to build smooth cooperation for an improvement in command and control between the Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military.

Considering that both have experience in rugby, Nakatani said, "Let's work together like in a scrum."

According to Nakatani, they did not discuss Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's proposals to revise the Japan-U.S. status of forces agreement and create an Asian version of NATO.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]