links for 2007-05-04

“Nowhere is cooperation more important than in the relationship between China and Japan,” he told a hearing at the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

At top security talks Tuesday, Japan and the United States reaffirmed their commitment to pressing North Korea to take steps toward denuclearization and to call on China to increase transparency with regard to its military.

Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has called for a review of the pacifist constitution imposed after World War II.

Southeast Asian countries aim to sign a trade pact with Japan in November, and will try to remove obstacles in the negotiations at a ministerial meeting in Brunei this week, an official said Thursday.

“A bold review of Japan’s postwar stance and an in-depth discussion of the Constitution for a ‘new Japan’ is necessary” to “open up a new era,” Abe said in a statement issued Thursday.

96 of the 100 senators, called on Hu to prod Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir to halt military operations throughout Darfur, withdraw troops from the area and follow through on Khartoum’s agreement to accept a joint UN and African Union peacekeeping forc