Abe to stress security on US trip

Japan's leader heads to Washington eyeing the potential prize of a trade deal that would shore up his "Abenomics" plan for economic revival, in addition to emphasizing a more prominent role for the country in regional security issues.

Abe will stress in Washington that times have changed for the former enemies, now the closest of allies. "Part of the message will be that Japan will play a bigger role in security," said an official involved in preparations for the trip.

The Japanese official said that during his eight-day visit from to US Abe would reaffirm Tokyo's commitment to peace and to past government expressions of remorse over the war.

Attention to Abe's handling of Japan's wartime past, still a touchy topic for its Asian neighbors 70 years after World War II, could overshadow his message on security. But Abe appears willing to take the risk as he will make the first speech by a Japanese leader to a joint session of Congress on April 29. Abe's speech coincides with growing pressure from critics to ease concerns that he wants to whitewash Japan's wartime past, while at the same time his conservative domestic allies feel that after 70 years of peaceful policies, fresh apologies are unneeded.

On the table for White House talks with US President Barack Obama is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a US-led initiative to tear down trade barriers covering 40 percent of the world economy that excludes China. Abe will also unveil during the visit the first update of US-Japan defense cooperation guidelines since 1997.

The revisions will amount to the biggest change in Japanese security policy in decades.

A recent government briefing paper on the defense cooperation guidelines revision said a key goal of the update was to reconfirm the US's "strong commitment" to the defense of Japan, Reuters reported.

This meeting will further develop the close relationship between Japan and US and the two countries are also re-adjusting their cooperation against the background of Japan's changing its interpretation of its right to self-defense, Lü Yaodong, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Sunday.

The US's "pivot to Asia" policy needs the support of Japan, which has strengthened its military power after relaxing the rules regarding self-defense, Lü said. Abe's cabinet last July adopted a resolution reinterpreting the constitution's pacifist Article 9 to allow Japan's armed forces to provide military aid to the US and other friendly countries under attack, exercising the right to "collective self-defense."