Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan met in Tokyo on Tuesday for talks on joint efforts in the region, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said
TOKYO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th June, 2019) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan met in Tokyo on Tuesday for talks on joint efforts in the region, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said.
"The sides praised steady progress in the US-Japanese cooperation with the aim of creating a 'Free and Open Indo-Pacific' and agreed to continue bolstering their partnership," the ministry said in a statement.
They talked about ways to denuclearize North Korea and bring back Japanese nationals that are believed to have been kidnapped by the North's intelligence agencies as well as about plans to relocate the US Futenma base in Okinawa amid protests against US military presence on the island.
North Korea has been actively engaged in denuclearization talks with the United States since 2018. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump expressed their commitment to this process at their first bilateral meeting in Singapore in June 2018.
