WASHINGTON—Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe re-affirmed sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands in Washington, D.C., Friday, declaring that any challenge to Japan’s ownership of the tiny island group will not be tolerated.
“No nation should make any miscalculation about the firmness of our resolve,” Abe said at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), after meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House earlier in the day.
China has been provocative in claiming all of the South China Sea and parts of the East China Sea, including the Senkaku Islands, known as the Daioyu Islands in Chinese.
Tensions escalated in September last year when the Japanese government announced that it would purchase three of the five Senkaku Islands from private owners.
Public demonstrations in China against Japan followed, and a flurry of non-military Chinese ships was sent to the area. The most recent provocations were to lay a series of buoys in Chinese-controlled waters near the islands and to increase the number of Chinese naval and paramilitary ships patrolling the area.
Abe told Obama that he is not interested in escalating the situation with China.
“I explained that we have always been dealing with this issue … in a calm manner,” he said through a translator. “We will continue to do so, and we have always done so,” he said.
During the CSIS talks, however, Abe said that history and international law both attest to Japan’s sovereignty of the Senkakus, and he made clear that any challenge will invoke the U.S.-Japan alliance.
“We simply cannot tolerate any challenge now and in the future,” he said, adding, “No one should ever doubt the robustness of the Japan-U.S. alliance.”
The United States has insisted that it takes no sides in territorial disputes in the region yet has publicly recognized Japan’s administration of the Senkaku Islands.
