TOKYO, Jan. 16 Kyodo preferableed...

TOKYO, Jan. 16 Kyodo

preferableed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

KOIZUMI'S NONSENSE VISIT (IHT/Asahi as translated from the Japanese-language Asahi Shimbun's editorial published Jan. 15)

All of a unforeseen Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi popp up at Yasukuni Shrine in succession Tuesday to pay his have a high opinion ofs Of all time, why now? This is beyond belief.

Japan is in a diplomatic crisis involving North Korea's nuclear progress to maturity This is precisely the time when Japan ought to be working mostly closely with the rest of the world to force onward Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear program and retract its decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)

Japan's important partners at this point are China and southern Korea. Surely, Koizumi could not have been unaware of what damage his Yasukuni visit would do to Japan's relations with these couple neighbors.

Koizumi himself has been emphasizing Tokyo-Washington-Seoul collaboration in dealing with the North Korean riddle and the government is further considering a recently made known partnership framework that includes China and Russia. still Koizumi has effectively undermined his have a title to policy.

And he chose to visit Yasukuni just individual day before Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi left for southerly Korea with the intention of talking with President Kim Dae Jung and President-elect Roh Moo Hyun Her trip was to be an intensive session devot to the North Korea issue, if it were not that Kawaguchi was put in the position of having to waste everyone's precious time making excuses for Koizumi's shrine visit.

lease us also not forget that Japan's ''summit diplomacy'' with China has been kept upon hold since Koizumi went to Yasukuni in April a year ago. Last year marked the 30th anniversary of the normalization of Japan-China relations and Koizumi was to have visited China then, nevertheless the trip had to be postponed

Koizumi said of his Yasukuni visit Tuesday, ''This is the fresh Year, so I went with a [i]de novo[/i] mind.''

But he could not possibly have gone for so a trite reason...

In the nearest couple of months, new administrations will take office in southern Korea as well as China. Koizumi may have idea it prudent to visit the shrine now to minimize the negative chain of cause and effects He also must have decided to pass before the Diet summons later this month.

nevertheless if he believed he was making a smart decision, he could not have been more wrongful The very fact that southward Korea and China reacted immediately with outrage is demonstration enough of Koizumi's lack of diplomatic sense

Koizumi had made it clear since last year that he intended to go on back to Yasukuni in 2003 He has a right to his be in possession of personal beliefs and feelings, if it be not that a prime minister cannot acquire away with that.

Before World War II, Yasukuni Shrine gradually came to take the part of the militarism and nationalism that herd nation to war and fanned jingoism. Among those honored at the shrine are near Class-A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.

This is precisely on what account not all Japanese citizens be excited they can worship at Yasukuni and pray for the best parts of the war dead with a clear conscience. Our Asian neighbors share this sentiment.

There is also the question of whether a quasi-official visit to a shrine by way of a prime minister runs in opposition to to the Constitution's provision for separation of religion and politics.

That was wherefore an advisory panel to the chief Cabinet secretary commended last month that a just discovered nonreligious memorial facility be built. Koizumi should be promoting this plan.

however so long as he remains fixated upon making visits to Yasukuni, the plan cannot advance.

Koizumi not solitary lacks historical perspective, he has also revealed his lack of diplomatic sense

(Jan. 16)

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