CAMP DAVID, Aug 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — US President Joe Biden will announce new security cooperation with Japan and South Korea including joint exercises at a first-of-a-kind three-way summit with their leaders that has already rattled China.
The summit at the Camp David presidential retreat would have been unimaginable until recently, with the two treaty-bound allies — together the base for some 84,500 US troops — at loggerheads for decades over the legacy of Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.
But South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, taking political risks at home, has turned the page by resolving a dispute over wartime forced labor, instead calling Japan a partner at a time of high tensions with both China and North Korea.
Biden, Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will agree to a multiyear plan of regular exercises in all domains, going beyond one-off drills in response to North Korea, and will announce a “commitment to consult” during crises, said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor.
While the United States already works closely with both allies, the new initiatives seek for “this three-way cooperation to get deeper and more institutionalized,” Sullivan told reporters at Camp David in the mountains northwest of Washington.
The leaders will also agree to share real-time data on North Korea and to hold summits every year, officials said.
Camp David marks the first time the three countries’ leaders have met for a standalone summit, not on the sidelines of larger event, and is the first diplomatic event since 2015 at the resort, which is synonymous with Middle East peacemaking.
Sullivan said the summit would have an “affirmative vision” on how the countries can deliver together and was “not taking aim at a country.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged the two economically developed Northeast Asian democracies instead to work with Beijing to “revitalize East Asia.”
“We must know where our roots lie,” he said.
As of late Thursday, negotiators from the three countries were still debating whether to refer overtly to China in the final statement, Japanese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hikariko Ono said.
But the summit hopes to move beyond a focus on North Korea or even just Asia. Tokyo and Seoul have offered a major boost to Ukraine as major non-Western powers joining pressure against Russia’s invasion.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he saw a “new era in trilateral cooperation.”
“Japan and South Korea are core allies — not just in the region, but around the world,” Blinken said. — NNN-AGENCIES
