Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agreed Thursday to closely coordinate their response to North Korea's recent launches of projectiles.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting in Washington, Suga said he briefed Pompeo about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's intention to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without preconditions to try and resolve the issue of Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.
It is rare for a chief Cabinet secretary, who is responsible for crisis management, to leave Japan. Suga's last official overseas trip was to Guam in 2015.