Abe's coalition partner urges greater efforts to gain trust of Japan's neighbors

Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) coalition ally on Thursday urged the government to overcome differences in opinions with China over an ongoing territorial dispute in the interest of improving relations. Senior officials here sent mixed messages to Beijing on Wednesday, a year after Japan unilaterally "nationalized" the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, which are central to a maritime standoff and souring diplomatic ties between the two countries. Natsuo Yamaguchi, the leader of the LDP's ruling partner New Komeito Party, is pushing for the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to change its tact in dealing with China and has urged moves towards building trust and allaying fears held by Japan's neighbors including China. He said that to station Japanese government employees on the disputed islands, for the moment, is not something he thinks Japan should do, party officials quoted his as saying on a trip to Washington Wednesday. "Regardless of the differences of opinions, how do we overcome that to improve relations between the two countries," the New Komeito Party chief said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, officials here said. Yamaguchi has cautioned the government on its moves towards changing its pacifist Constitution and said that more needs to be done to make the public fully aware of the situation. "We're not at the stage where the public can understand this, that's my feeling," Yamaguchi said of Abe's plans to revise the nation's self-imposed stance on collective self-defense. "It will be necessary to have careful and deep discussions about it from various angles," he added. Yamaguchi has previously called on the government to provide unequivocal reasons for a reinterpretation of the Constitution and to maintain logical consistency with other security-related matters, saying it was his job to act as the "brakes" on Abe administration's attempts to speed ahead with self-serving, ultra- right leaning agendas. Yamaguchi, the first New Komeito leader to visit Washington in 10 years, also said that Japan needs to comprehensively eliminate any concerns or sense of danger that its neighbors and allies might have over any potential constitutional changes. "There have to be substantive reasons and neighboring countries and our ally, the United States, have to have any concerns allayed. They can't feel that there is any danger involved," officials quoted Yamaguchi as saying. Yamaguchi, whose party will need to sign off on any plans Abe puts forward to revising Japan's Constitution, including provisional moves to set up Japan's version of the U.S. National Security Council, also said that Japan could help diffuse the situation with China by setting up increased channels of communication between politicians in each country, and in doing so stand more chance of paving the way towards agreements rather than apprehension.