Tokyo, 27 October, /AJMEDIA/
Japan and Lithuania said Wednesday they will set up a bilateral framework to discuss security issues, amid Russia’s prolonged war in Ukraine as well as China’s growing military and economic clout in the Indo-Pacific region.
After their meeting in Tokyo, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his Lithuanian counterpart Ingrida Simonyte issued a joint statement in which they vowed to strengthen ties between the two nations by sharing knowledge of international security issues under the new dialogue framework, although without showing any time frame.
Condemning Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the statement said the two leaders shared “the growing recognition of the inseparability of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security.”
Kishida told a joint press conference with Simonyte that Russia’s nuclear blackmail is “a threat to peace and stability of the international community, and therefore absolutely unacceptable,” adding the actual use of nuclear weapons must not happen.
They also aired their wariness about “the expansion of military power without transparency and unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force” in the Indo-Pacific, in an apparent reference to Beijing’s assertive territorial claims and military buildup in the East and South China seas.
Simonyte said at the news conference that recent geopolitical challenges such as China’s economic coercion, the Russian war and North Korea’s missile launches “show a need for like-minded nations to cooperate closer together.”
Lithuania, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, shares borders with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and Moscow’s close ally Belarus.
