Agence France-Presse,
Moscow: Japan on Monday reassured Moscow that an anti-missile shield planned with the US military was no threat to Russia and was aimed only at North Korea.
Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow that the missile shield was needed in response to communist North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes.
“Concerning cooperation with the United States on an anti-missile defence system, it must be said that Japan's situation forced this on us,” Komura told journalists. “It is in no way aimed at Russia.”
Russia has expressed strong opposition to US anti-missile plans, particularly a system of 10 interceptors and a radar based in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Lavrov said Moscow “accepted the explanation” of Japan.
Russia would prefer however that Japan joined a global anti-missile system anchored around Russia, Europe and the United States, Lavrov said, because this would be “the best method for monitoring and where necessary neutralising the threat.”
Last October, Komura told Lavrov in a meeting in Tokyo that Japan had no intention of backing off its anti-missile plans.
The United States has a security treaty under which it protects Japan, which has been officially pacifist since defeat in World War II.
Japan has had rocky relations with Russia. The two nations have never signed a treaty to formally end World War II due to a dispute over four islands off Japan's northern coast which Soviet troops seized in 1945.
