Japan Times Reporting That Kishida To Link Japan with NATO at the Vilnius Summit

July 2, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Japan Times, a liberal newspaper, reports today Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who will attend next week’s NATO summit, plans to offer “more support for Ukraine, a new NATO office in Tokyo and a new partnership agreement” with NATO. Also attending the NATO Summit will be the leaders of South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. All four have been part of NATO’s “global partners” group since the early 2010s, and are “expected to enter deeper partnerships with the trans-Atlantic alliance,” writes the Times.

“The planned transition to NATO’s new Individually Tailored Partnership Program (ITPP) later this year also appears far more advanced than initially reported, with the Vilnius summit likely to see the new partnerships approved for each of the four countries, Jamie Shea, a former deputy assistant secretary-general for emergency security challenges at NATO, told the Japan Times. ‘The ITPPs have been negotiated and approved at the ambassador level,’ said Shea, who is now a professor at the University of Exeter in England, adding that the leaders would use the summit to ‘endorse and highlight them as a mark of progress.’ ”

The Times says that there is resistance from French President Emmanuel Macron, who is said that NATO should remain focused on its own region.