MANCHESTER (United States), Aug 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — US President Donald Trump paid his “highest respect” to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe and voiced concern over his “great friend” resigning for health reasons.
“I want to pay my highest respect to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a very
great friend of mine,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he
returned from a campaign rally in New Hampshire.
“We’ve had a great relationship and I just feel very badly about it,
because it must be very severe for him to leave.”
Abe announced Friday in TOKYO he will resign over health problems, in a development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world’s third-largest economy.
He told a press conference that he was suffering from a recurrence of the ulcerative colitis that ended his first term in office.
Abe is expected to stay in office until his ruling Liberal Democratic Party can choose a successor, in an election likely to take place among the party’s lawmakers and members.
Abe, who stepped down as prime minister just one year into his first term, in 2007, offered his apologies for the second resignation. — NNN-AGENCIES
