Word: abely
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...Japan there may be some trepidation over the new round of six-party talks. It won't escape the notice of officials in Tokyo that Japanese diplomats were apparently not involved in the talks that brought Pyongyang back to the table. Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose term started just two weeks before Kim's nuclear test, has built support with the Japanese public by standing firm against North Korea. If Abe is seen to go soft, he could lose his conservative political base, already shaken by his recent diplomatic overtures to Beijing and Seoul. While Abe...
...While Abe earned points for his handling of the nuclear crisis?even Yamaguchi admits that the administration "isn't making any mistakes"?his peacemaking visits to Beijing and Seoul will prove even more important, given the economic ties between the three nations and the need to coordinate regional responses to future diplomatic crises. That Abe managed to schedule the meetings at all was an impressive achievement, requiring the blue-blooded conservative to dodge toward the ideological center. China and South Korea had cut off most high-level contacts with Japan to protest former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits...
...Abe is distinguishing his administration from the previous one in other ways. To compensate for what even his own supporters perceive as a lack of Koizumi's charisma, Abe has taken a team-oriented approach. He packed his cabinet with close associates, expanded the number of prime-ministerial advisers from two to five and began forming a Japanese equivalent of the U.S. National Security Council, reporting directly to the Prime Minister. The creation of Team Abe is an attempt to shift political power away from Kasumigaseki, where Japan's formidable bureaucrats toil. "There's always been a struggle between...
...Forming a team is one thing. Winning is another. The question is whether Abe?having "plucked the low-hanging fruit," as Kingston puts it, by taking a tough stance on North Korea?can transfer his momentum to domestic issues such as pension reform and economic inequality, bread-and-butter concerns that will likely push foreign policy off the front pages long before next July's critical upper-house elections. Many analysts are doubtful, not least because Abe has yet to set out his domestic agenda. His maiden Diet speech contained a lot of rhetoric about the need to make Japan...
...Seko, Abe's adviser, argues that his boss's performance on North Korea demonstrates exactly what kind of leader he is. "It shows that he is capable in crisis management," says Seko. "On issues like this he is very clear on where he stands." Given Kim Jong Il's track record, Abe can probably count on him to create trouble down the road, giving another boost to the Japanese leader's image as a "fighting politician," as his advisers put it. But Abe, like Koizumi, will ultimately be defined by how well he can manage Japan's recovering economy, solve...