Word: kaifu
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Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu is apprehensive about his scheduled meeting with George Bush in New York City this week. Both men know that many Americans want Japan to play a larger role in the Persian Gulf. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Kaifu's government dithered for nearly a month before offering $1 billion to help finance the multilateral response. "Contemptible tokenism!," harrumphed Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. The U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, Michael Armacost, was more diplomatic, but just as tough. Two weeks ago, Kaifu raised the figure to $4 billion -- serious money but eminently affordable...
...Japanese justify keeping their military personnel out of harm's way by citing their "peace constitution," which the U.S. imposed after World War II and which restricts the carefully named Self-Defense Forces to the home islands and territorial waters. Still, some of Kaifu's advisers believe the government could send communications and logistics experts, even minesweepers to the crisis zone. Last week, in an effort to blunt the criticism that Japan is wimping out, the Foreign Ministry dispatched a small team of volunteer medics to Saudi Arabia and promised more may follow. Others advocate dispatching combat units under United...
...phone call was especially important. Before the crisis, Japan imported 12% of its oil from Iraq and Kuwait. Nonetheless, Bush persuaded Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu to join the boycott of Iraqi crude. "People are always giving Bush guff for his first-name strategy with world leaders," says an Administration official. "But then he calls Tokyo and gets Kaifu to go along with the oil embargo, a step that may not be in Japan's self-interest. To say we were surprised is to put it mildly." Equally impressive was the President's engineering of United Nations sanctions against Iraq...
...turn, was a sort of warmup for what is likely to be an even sharper dispute at this week's seven-nation Western economic summit in Houston. That meeting will reunite Bush, Thatcher, Mitterrand, Kohl and Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney of Canada and Giulio Andreotti of Italy, plus Toshiki Kaifu of non-NATO Japan...
Foreign leaders seemed to take well to Bush'sSouthern hospitality. Kaifu waved his cowboy hatat the rodeo's cheering crowds, while Delorstapped his feet to the beat of the country andwestern music...