Paris
\nJapan and France agreed on Wednesday to coordinate closely in pushing for an end to the US-Israeli war with Iran and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to oil and gas tankers, Japan\u2019s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said.
\n\u201cBecause the international situation is so challenging, I believe there is great significance in the leaders of Japan and France deepening their personal ties and making our cooperation even stronger,\u201d Takaichi said after talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Tokyo on security ties and industrial cooperation.
\n\u201cWe share a belief in international law and in the international order based on the United Nations Charter, and we also believe in the democratic values that we defend. This is why\u2026 we both advocate the return to peace, to a ceasefire, to calm, and to the free movement of people and goods through the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d Macron said.
\nTakaichi echoed his words, saying the two leaders had agreed \u201con the importance of ensuring the safety of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, maintaining a stable supply of essential materials, and calming the situation as soon as possible\u201d.
\nWith the Middle East conflict now in its fifth week, Japan, France and other countries are grappling with rising energy costs. Unless the conduit for about a fifth of the world\u2019s oil and liquefied natural gas flows reopens, they could face shortages of petroleum products.
\nJapan, which normally gets around \u200b90% of its oil from the Middle East, has begun drawing on its oil reserves to cushion the economic blow. France has held talks with dozens of countries as it seeks proposals for a mission to reopen the waterway once the conflict ends while Japan has said it could consider dispatching minesweepers, though the scope of any role would be constrained by its pacifist constitution.
\nThe two leaders also said they would pursue closer security ties in the Indo-Pacific and signed agreements on cooperation in critical mineral supply chains, civilian nuclear technology and artificial intelligence.
\nUS President Donald Trump lashed out at France on Tuesday, writing on social media that Paris had been \u201cvery unhelpful\u201d during the war with Iran, which has since spread across the Middle East.
\n\u201cI\u2019m well aware that sometimes Europe can be seen as a continent that is slower than others,\u201d Macron told an audience of Japanese business leaders and investors in Tokyo. \u201cBut predictability has value, and we have demonstrated that over all these past years and, dare I say, even these past weeks: we are where you know we will go,\u201d he added.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s not bad, in times like these, believe me,\u201d he said.
\nFurther, Macron criticised countries that said they were \u201cgoing much faster\u201d than their allies, but \u201cyou don\u2019t know whether the day after tomorrow they will still be in that position, and whether tomorrow they won\u2019t make a decision that could hurt you without even informing you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paris Japan and France agreed on Wednesday to coordinate closely in pushing for an end to the US-Israeli war with Iran and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to oil and gas tankers, Japan\u2019s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said. \u201cBecause the international situation is so challenging, I believe there is great significance in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95762,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95734\/revisions\/95762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}