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Japan, Britain set to agree on joint development of arms: paper
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron (L) shakes hands with Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda ahead of a bilateral meeting before the start of the G20 Summit of major world economies in Cannes November 3, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Toby Melville
TOKYO |
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and Britain are set to agree to begin joint development of arms following Tokyo's easing of its ban on exports of military equipment late last year, the Mainichi daily reported on Wednesday.
It will mark the first time that Japan has worked with a country other than the United States on military equipment after making an exception for the U.S. missile defense program.
Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his British counterpart David Cameron are expected to formally agree to begin talks when they meet on April 10 in Tokyo, the paper said.
The newspaper quoted an unidentified senior defense ministry official as saying that it could take the two countries about a year to decide on specific items for joint development as even with the relaxation of rules, Japan still imposes restrictions on sales to third parties.
The two countries may gradually start joint development with small military equipment, rather than big machines like fighters, it said, quoting an unidentified senior foreign ministry official.
Japan in December decided to relax its self-imposed decades-old ban to allow it to take part in the joint development and production of arms with other countries and to supply military equipment for humanitarian missions, opening new markets to its defense contractors.
Other countries such as Australia and France have also expressed interest in working with Japan on military equipment but Japan has prioritized its agreement with Britain after it chose Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jets over the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by a consortium of European companies including BAE Systems.
(Reporting by Rie Ishiguro; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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I wonder if this is a way of getting around Russias objections to the US missile shield..?
Also very interesting is the fact that Japan started it’s military “sharing” pact with the US in a not so well known ‘pact’:
After world war 2, the US agreed not to seek prosecution for japanese war criminals guilty of the most horrendous chemical and biological weapons attacks and ‘live human experimentation’ the world has ever seen, some would say the most horrendous crimes against humanity in human history, and in return Japan would hand over all of its WMD data to the US.
This data was collected by using tens of thousands of Chinese test subjects after the Japanese invasion. The Chinese civillian prisoners were subjected to chemical and biological weapons and dissected while they were still alive without anesthetic…
Good start to a long and healthy relationship!
Now the US enjoys very close ties with the two cultures that, 50 years ago, were the biggest threats to civilization in human history.
Germany and Japan.
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