US to host 3-way summit with Japan, S. Korea on Aug. 18

TOKYO, July 21 ------ US President Joe Biden is planning to host a trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea on Aug. 18, Japanese government sources, with North Korea's nuclear and missile threats likely to be top of the agenda.

The summit involving Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is expected to be held at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, near Washington, according to the sources. If the plan goes ahead, it will be the first standalone summit between the leaders of the United States, Japan and South Korea, though they have held trilateral meetings on the fringes of international conferences and other occasions. Biden, Kishida and Yoon last met together in May in Hiroshima on the sidelines of a Group of Seven summit. But the previous three-way meeting lasted for just a couple of minutes amid a jam-packed schedule. Biden at the time invited Kishida and Yoon to the United States for an official summit. When the three leaders next meet, they are likely to discuss how to deal with North Korea, which has continued to carry out ballistic missile launches. Biden, Kishida and Yoon may discuss a plan for achieving real-time information sharing about the North's missile launches by the end of this year, the sources said.

Currently, Washington has a system that is separately linked to Tokyo and Seoul for detecting and tracking Pyongyang's missiles, but its key Asian security allies do not have a mechanism for immediately sharing such information with each other. The momentum for closer trilateral relations increased when Yoon visited Tokyo in March, marking the first visit to Tokyo by a South Korean leader in many years. Yoon and Kishida agreed to move on from a long-festering dispute over wartime conscripted labor. As bilateral relations between Japan and South Korea have improved, the two countries have increased policy coordination together with the United States, expanding beyond issues concerning North Korea to include areas ranging from Russia's war against Ukraine to supply chains for critical materials.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said at a press conference, "It is important to further deepen trilateral strategic cooperation in order to uphold the rules-based, free and open international order while responding to North Korea." The top government spokesman, however, refrained from confirming the specific date of the planned summit.

Source: news.abs-cbn.com