Tokyo: Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi on Friday said Japan would increase military cooperation with Germany in the Indo-Pacific region because he welcomed the call port by the first German warship to visit Japan in about 20 years.
Frigate Bayern visited Tokyo after two days of training along with a destroyer of the Japanese Maritime Samidare troops in the Pacific Ocean in the midst of maritime activities that were increasingly assertive by China in the region.
Ship visits are “important turning points” in pursuit of “free and open indo Pacific” and secure one of the most important shipping lines in the world, Kishi said after examining Frigate with German officials.
“This shows a strong German commitment to actively contribute to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.
Frigate left Germany in August to spread in the Indo-Pacific as part of a similar movement of this country and followed a similar movement by other European countries including Britain, France and the Netherlands.
The warships from these countries have recently conducted a joint naval exercise in the East and South China Sea.
Germany adopted last year’s defense guidelines with a focus on the Indo-Pacific region and since then stepped over the military bond with Japan.
Both parties signed an agreement in March about the protection of confidential information exchange, and held their first security talk involving defense and foreign ministers in June.
“The Indo-Pacific is today one of the most strategic areas in Indonesia,” General Eberhard Zorn, the head of the German armed forces, said at a press conference along with Kishi.
“Here an important decision for freedom, peace and welfare in the world is being made.
Placing our frigate to the Indo-Pacific explains that Germany redeem our general values.” China, who claimed most of the disputed South China Sea and the islands in East China Sea, have maintained a growing maritime activity and said it has the right to maintain the interests of sovereignty, security and development.
Japanese officials said China ship routinely violated Japanese territorial waters around the islands in the East China Sea, sometimes threatening fishermen boats.
Zorn said Bayern had committed small-scale exercises with eight military countries since leaving port calls in various locations including Guam and Australia.
Starting in mid-November, Bayern will carry out monitoring and supervision based on the resolution of the UN Security Council of Maritime activities by North Korean ship, including the possibility of transferring ship-to-ship from cargo which is prohibited in the regional sea.