Democratic Party of Japan leader Katsuya Okada reiterated his opposition to the dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq when he met Tuesday with former U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary Joseph Nye in Boston, according to party members.
The head of Japan's main opposition party also told Nye that the Japanese government should not provide rice aid to North Korea without first getting an adequate response from Pyongyang over demands that it scrap its nuclear arms programs and account for the Japanese it abducted, the members said.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi promised North Korean leader Kim Jong Il during a May 22 summit in Pyongyang that Japan would provide 250,000 tons of food aid and medical supplies worth $10 million to North Korea in one or two months.
Nye, who served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under former President Bill Clinton and is now a professor at Harvard University, asked Okada for cooperation over Iraq, saying the situation there cannot be left alone.