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US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Japan on Thursday for the final stop on her Asian tour after a visit to Taiwan that infuriated China.
AFP reporters saw the politician disembark from her plane at Tokyo’s Yokota Air Base before greeting the US ambassador and other officials with hugs and handshakes.
Beijing has launched large-scale military exercises in the waters around Taiwan after Pelosi this week became the highest-profile US elected official to set foot on the self-governing island in 25 years.
The 82-year-old politician defied a string of harsh threats from China to meet with Taiwanese leaders on Wednesday and said her trip made “absolutely clear” that the United States would not let down a democratic ally.
It’s Pelosi’s first trip to Japan since 2015, and she came from South Korea, where her plan included a visit to the border with nuclear-armed North Korea.
She will meet Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for breakfast on Friday, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said, to discuss the two countries’ alliance and issues of common interest.
Pelosi is also scheduled to discuss international affairs with Speaker of the Japanese House of Representatives Hiroyuki Hosoda.
Japan, a key US ally, has lodged a diplomatic protest with China over its massive military exercises around Taiwan, which began on Thursday.
Shortly before Pelosi’s arrival, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said five ballistic missiles launched by China were believed to have landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
Parts of Japan’s southernmost island region of Okinawa lie near Taiwan, as do islands that are at the center of a long-running dispute between Tokyo and Beijing.
US President Joe Biden also angered Beijing during a visit to Japan in May when he said US forces would defend Taiwan militarily if China tried to take control of the island by force – prompting Beijing to issue a warning that the US is “playing with fire”. .
But Biden and his team insisted at the time that their decades-old approach to Taiwan would remain.
These include arming the democratic island in its own defense while acknowledging China’s legal sovereignty and expressing “strategic ambiguity” about whether American troops would ever intervene if China invaded the territory.
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