*EPF410 02/07/2002
Transcript: Adm. Blair Discusses Japan's Self Defense Forces, Korea
(February 4 press briefing in Tokyo) (5620)

The commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific (CINCPAC) expressed cautious support for a greater military role in the region for Japan's Self Defense Forces.

"I think the progression from support to eventually protective forces and on to other forms of military contributions if done logically and under UN mandate in consultation with other countries is the right way to do it," Adm. Dennis C. Blair told American journalists in Tokyo February 4.

"As I travel to the region I ask the question what do you think about Japan taking a greater military role, and both the uniformed leadership and the civilian leadership of the other countries say well, it has to be done carefully but we think it's something that would be in our benefit," he added.

Blair suggested that the Japanese Self Defense Forces could start out by assisting international coalitions' strategic lift, refueling, communications, and reconnaissance efforts.

"These pieces Japan has very good capability in," Blair said, "and they're pieces which are not as threatening as a soldier with a bayonet and the flag moving through villages."

Blair praised Japanese contributions to the common campaign against terrorism, noting that Japan has provided U.S. ships with more than $60 million worth of oil.

"Had we not had a Japanese oiler come to our forces we would have had to deploy one from the United States, so Japan fills a real important operational need from our point of view, as well as providing aircraft transportation which starts here in Japan and it goes as far as Diego Garcia which is one of our key operating bases in support of the operations in Afghanistan," Blair said.

When questioned by a reporter about American involvement in the recent interception of a North Korean ship in the waters between Japan and China, Blair confirmed that "the United States and Japan shared intelligence both ways on that particular vessel during the incident."

"We both have forces and surveillance responsibilities in this part of the world and we pass information back and forth both on air and sea and what's going on the ground.... We plan for it to continue," Blair said.

In response to a reporter's inquiry concerning the extent to which North Korea has forward deployed its conventional troops along the border with South Korea, Blair said "there has been a steady and continued move of ground forces, particularly artillery, further south, closer to the DMZ, more of it within range of the populated areas of Seoul."

"Units have been broken down from previous positions which were in reserve at the higher than corps level down to and part of the forward corps there," he continued. He added, however, that it was difficult to know what the movements meant for the future.

"I've learned that trying to predict North Korean behavior is a pretty fruitless exercise. You have to sort of deal with it where it lies and keep the deterrent part of it strong so that there are definitely limits on what North Korean can do, either in terms of military action or in terms of intimidation," Blair said.

Following is the CINCPAC transcript of the event:

(begin transcript)

UNITED STATES PACIFIC COMMAND

Adm. Dennis C. Blair
Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command

Roundtable with American Journalists
Tokyo, Japan

February 4, 2002

Adm. Blair: I'll tell you a little bit about what I'm doing here in Japan. As I mentioned at the Press Club, this is a five-day visit. I started down in Singapore, went to Malaysia, to the eastern part of Malaysia in Sabah, then to Vietnam, here in Japan and then to Korea.

I have meetings here in Tokyo for a couple of days, then I'm going down to be in Yokosuka and Atsugi on Wednesday, meet with the officers and sailors who are stationed there, in particular the Kitty Hawk Battle Group that got back from the North Arabian Sea not long ago and congratulate them on the good job they did.

The topics that are certainly on the top of my agenda, I haven't had any of my official meetings yet, but the last three years that I've been coming here there's always been a lot to talk about in terms of where we're moving and the security relationship which has seen tremendous change from the Cold War tasks to going to a new situation in this part of the world. At the top of the list right now is very much our common campaign against terrorism.

The Japanese contributions have been not only historic and important from the point of view of the alliance, but they've been a real addition to what we're doing. The total value of the fuel that's been provided to U.S. ships is over $60 million. Had we not had a Japanese oiler come to our forces we would have had to deploy one from the United States, so Japan fills a real important operational need from our point of view, as well as providing aircraft transportation which starts here in Japan and it goes as far as Diego Garcia which is one of our key operating bases in support of the operations in Afghanistan. That's on top of the very strong protection to our bases and the people who live in them.

Very effective measures that have been taken. So Japan has ratcheted up their responsibilities for the safety and protection of our people here.

Those are the topics that are of most interest and of course we're really looking forward to President Bush coming out for his visit here very soon to take things on to a new level, and we see the alliance going forward in very good shape.

Let me stop there and ask you what's on your mind and answer your questions. Whatever you want to cover.

Question: At lunch it was clear that I think while the U.S. is pretty happy with where the alliance is and would like to just strengthen it and not change it too much, there are a number of questions on the Japanese side in the Japanese public and the Japanese media about why we need to have troops in Okinawa, why a lot of things are the way they are, why the Status of Forces Agreement is the way it is, should it be changed, etc.

Do you see that those kind of divergences could increase over the coming years?

Adm. Blair: It could, but what I have seen as the officials on both sides skillfully move in the forums that were formed -- there are new things that we face and there are new opportunities and new needs.

The Marine bases in Okinawa were established because that's where the Marines were at the end of World War II. That's no secret. That's the way it was. But those same Marines have been the ones who went down to Indonesia when there was a feeling that we might have to evacuate some of our citizens if civil unrest had continued in that part of the world; they were the Marines who exercised in Thailand on these new world missions; they are part of our deterrent posture in Korea. So they're not doing anything close to what they did 50 years ago, much less 60 years ago when they were storming the beaches.

We talked a little bit about the naval forces. When I was over here as part of the Midway Battle Group we went up into the Sea of Japan and we did our exercises against Backfire aircraft and bombers and Badgers and Soviet aircraft flying down from Vladivostok. Now our battle group is going into the North Arabian Sea and operating with Army special forces against terrorists.

So I've been struck by the ability of the alliance to adapt and to manage. And I'm struck by the amount of change in what our junior officers do serving in Japan these days as compared to what I did 20 years ago.

Question: Sir, do you think there's a gap between the Okinawa people's impression and what the U.S. military's impression is?

Adm. Blair: I feel that's a minority opinion and the polling data as I see it pretty much reflects that. The people I talked to when I went to Okinawa and the folks who come visit me -- You all know as well as I do that state and local politics are vocal in virtually every country in the world whether the United States or Okinawa or Korea or anywhere else. The phenomenon of being four-square and solidly for national defense and the armed forces I suspect is a little bit different place from sort of where I deal with it. It's one that we see around the world. I think we have to be responsive to that and I think we have to do that.

When I landed at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, and I'm coming right in over a densely populated city and then plopping down on a Marine Corps Base, that doesn't seem right to me. We should move the base up towards Nago where we'll have a flight pattern that is not right over people's houses in an important urban area, and we are doing that.

So I think that a lot of what you see is pretty natural and understandable and I think that both governments have been responsive to it. Most notably but not exclusively is the Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO) agreement. It was a terrible incident in '95, the rape that jumped us into doing some things that we probably should have been thinking of ahead of time. But we did them, agreed to them, and we're marching forward. If I recall the numbers, at the end of the agreement there will be something like a fifth of the land area in Okinawa that was used for U.S. bases will have been turned back over to local governments. Some of the most intrusive training will have been moved, live artillery fire will have been moved. I think we're moving in the right direction.

I see the same sort of phenomenon where I live in Hawaii. In fact a delegation from Okinawa came to Hawaii and walked around and talked to both our uniformed and also our civic leaders about our alliance with the local Hawaiian government. And the island of Oahu is in fact smaller than Okinawa, much smaller, and has more people, and has more military presence. We'll work through it.

Question: Since the President's State of the Union speech there have been some different reactions, divergent sort of language by your two principal allies in this region, South Korea and Japan, concerning qualification of North Korea as a member in this axis to evil. The [chief cabinet secretary] here said that Japan does not consider North Korea in those terms, and South Korea, although I can't pull a quote up off the top of my head, but seemed very eager in everything said recently to try to play down the differences with North Korea and promoting dialogue.

Is there a perception gap taking place between Washington and East Asian allies here about the North Korean regime? And specifically with South Korea about the conventional weapons threat. Is there something that we know that they don't, or that we see differently than they do?

Adm. Blair: If there is a perception gap I'm sure you all will tell us about it very immediately and in great detail. Let me just say a couple of things from what I've observed in dealing with North Korea.

There are elements of what North Korea does which are very threatening and dangerous to all of the region and the world, and there are elements of what North Korea does which gives you an impression that they understand how backwards and isolated they are and how much the rest of the world has left them behind, and that it might be better for their citizens and their government if they were to change their ways of doing business. We've seen that threatening behavior for a long time, back to the attack on the South Korean Cabinet threatening behavior in '83, or even the time that I've been in this job we've had five submarines come down the Korean coast and special forces come ashore and they've killed South Koreans there. And we've had things like them shooting a missile over Japan in a clear threat to their neighbors.

On the other hand we've seen in some other things like President Kim Jong Il's trip to China, going to Shanghai and looking around at economic development and some observers thinking that he was looking at how North Korea might change economically.

That's sort of a regional policy. Outside of the region, North Korea has been selling missiles to whoever wants to buy them. They've been involved in drug traffic in other places in order to raise money and they don't much mind the human cost. So they have a mixed record.

What I hear the President saying is that the terrorist attack on the United States has shown the danger that this sort of behavior can cause to the United States and those countries which are of a mind to turn to these sorts of tactics against the United States or against its friends better rethink it. I think that North Korea is probably doing some rethinking now.

Question: About conventional weapons. What I pick up from American military sources and South Korean military sources there are two fairly different pictures about the extent to which the North has forward positioned its conventional troops along the border.

Is there something recent that's happened in that regard? Can you fill us in on what their positioning is like?

Adm. Blair: I think you probably had the wrong picture.

We, our intelligence and South Korean intelligence is saying that there has been a steady and continued move of ground forces, particularly artillery, further south, closer to the DMZ, more of it within range of the populated areas of Seoul. Units have been broken down from previous positions which were in reserve at the higher than corps level down to and part of the forward corps there. Continuing improvements in North Korean communications are being made despite the dismal economic condition of the country.

The question is what does it mean? Because these sort of moves not only increase the North Korean armed forces' ability for offense, but they also make more sense in terms of its forward defense. So you can't get into the mind of a planner and know whether oh, I was just kidding, that was just a defensive move and when the circumstances change we use it for offense. We pretty much look at the facts and see what it is, and we've been pretty consistent that in order to decrease the military tension in the region we need to have the sorts of confidence-building measures that we've seen in other areas of the world. If you can gradually walk back forces you can raise warning times, you can give indicators that give reassurance to both sides. In fact these have been proposed fairly early on by the South Koreans. Simple things like exchange of notification of exercises, exchange of observers, and there hasn't been a response from North Korea.

So I think there's plenty of opportunity for North Korea to take steps in order to reassure their neighbors that whatever they're doing is more of a defensive nature and to cooperate with us on raising the warning times which are very, very tight in that part of the world.

Question: Here in Japan there's been in the past year really a tendency of conservative politicians and people who seem to very much want to increase the role of Japan's own military.

How does the U.S. regard that? How do you balance sort of probably a natural and necessary long-term emergence of a stronger Japan defense versus moves that may be seen as provocation by neighbors?

Adm. Blair: I think that it all depends on how it's done. Japan has been very reassuring to its neighbors in the way it has taken on new missions. Before the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Forces deployed, Prime Minister Koizumi made a trip to China, he made a trip to South Korea, explained what he intended to do and then went ahead and did it. When you get a combination of the leaders talking about what's involved and the actions match the words I think the region is reassured.

As I travel to the region I ask the question what do you think about Japan taking a greater military role, and both the uniformed leadership and the civilian leadership of the other countries say well, it has to be done carefully but we think it's something that would be in our benefit.

The forces on East Timor, for example, are engineer forces that, these are primarily logistic support forces. But unlike some of the construction forces that were sent to, for example, Cambodia back in '93, I think, they will have worked out the ability to protect themselves in a manner that all military forces do when they're in a potentially dangerous area.

So I think the progression from support to eventually protective forces and on to other forms of military contributions if done logically and under UN mandate in consultation with other countries is the right way to do it. That's the sequence that I get when I talk to Japanese military and political leaders.

When you put together an international coalition it's not light infantry that you really need. The world has a number of countries that can supply that pretty well. In order to put together an effective coalition, some of the other pieces that you find you're short of are strategic lift, refueling, communications, and in reconnaissance capabilities. These pieces Japan has very good capability in and they're pieces which are not as threatening as a soldier with a bayonet and the flag moving through villages. So I think there's a natural initial role that the Japanese Self Defense Forces can play that would be of great benefit to the region, would be welcomed by them, and that it would be the best place to start as Japan expanded the roles that its wealth and influence would eventually merit.

Question: If you were to look at this purely academically, how long will there be a Japan/U.S. security arrangement?

Adm. Blair: Purely academically -- (Laughter)

I would put the question the other way around. I can't imagine a time that Japan and America's interests would diverge so much that one side or the other would say let's throw it overboard. I just see a congruence of interests going on as long as we have the same sort of countries we have which are democratic, free market, committed countries.

I think the nature of it will vary over time, and I think the military sphere will be one of the key ways that does vary, and I think it will reflect the overall relationship.

But I think that the fundamental convergence of interests as expressed in the Mutual Defense Treaty will endure.

Question: A related question. When Senator Sessions came to Yokosuka a few months ago he suggested that the best way to have a forward carrier presence was to extend the Kitty Hawk's life. What's your feeling on that, considering the ship's 40 years old.

Adm. Blair: As I mentioned, I'm a little partial to the Kitty Hawk, having sailed on her. So I think she can go forever. But no, the Kitty Hawk will eventually have to be replaced and Yokosuka is the right place for a carrier to be, and I'm sure we'll work it with Japan when the time comes.

On the obvious question of whether it will be a nuclear powered carrier or not, we have nuclear powered carriers that visit Japan -- Yokosuka in particular -- on a frequent basis. There are dozens of civilian nuclear power plants that are located all around Yokosuka. The nuclear power plants on our ships have the best safety record in the world. So I don't think it's a question that has any technical restrictions that endanger lives, property, any more than a conventional carrier. It's a case of working through the questions when the time comes.

Question: Can you tell us anything about possible American involvement in the interception of a North Korean ship off, well, in the waters between Japan and China a month and a half ago? There have been reports here that the United States played an intelligence role in pinpointing the ship and flagging it for the Japanese. I don't know if you can confirm that. If so, I wonder if it's part of any stepped-up American surveillance of any kind of North Korean shipping or in general.

Adm. Blair: I'm not going to go into details, but I can confirm that the United States and Japan shared intelligence both ways on that particular vessel during the incident. And we should. We both have forces and surveillance responsibilities in this part of the world and we pass information back and forth both on air and sea and what's going on the ground. So it did go on in this case as it has in other cases. We plan for it to continue. But I'm afraid I can't go into who told what when.

Question: Sure. The second part of it was has there recently been any stepped-up surveillance of shipping lanes because of North Korea or regarding North Korea?

Adm. Blair: I would say that there has not been an overall increase in our effort. It does ebb and flow, depending on events, the degree of tension across the DMZ, the time of the year. Sometimes nature helps us, sometimes we have to be more watchful ourselves. Those factors are pretty -- We pretty well keep track of what's going on around the area on a constant basis.

Question: How about missile defense? Has that come up in your discussions here? And last year before 9/11 there were certainly indications that while Japan wasn't going to oppose it or criticize it openly that there were some reservations. I'm wondering if conversations about that are continuing.

Adm. Blair: Yeah. I've discussed it in prior visits. Both the United States and Japan have forces and citizens that are under the range of North Korean missiles and we both think that we ought to have a packet of defenses against them as well as the deterrent posture that I talked about earlier that we have to maintain. In fact Japan and the United States are cooperating in research for the so-called Navy Theater Wide System that is a system that if it's developed the way we're thinking about it would make a lot of sense for Japan because it could be based on destroyers which they have purchased. And if you look at the geography of North Korea of Japan, the Sea of Japan, that system would provide a lot of defense in depth for Japan in addition to the Patriot systems which they deploy in some of their major areas.

So that's part of it, that's the main part of it that I deal with. I don't follow in a lot of detail the national missile defense piece of that and take any sort of a role on that one. But we've had troops killed by SCUDs in Saudi Arabia. Those are SCUD-class missiles that are positioned, about 600 in North Korea, and being able to shoot them down is good. We can't do much of it right now.

Question: Going back to something you said earlier, bringing Japan's military up to the level that's a measure of its economic --

Adm. Blair: Uh huh.

Question: What kind of changes do you think need to be made in the Japanese military to bring it up to that level? How significant would these changes be?

Adm. Blair: The things that would have to happen are more in the area of tactics, techniques, and procedures than they are in fundamental hardware there. We find that operating in coalitions overseas requires a sort of international interoperability which Japan would have to work with and develop if it were to be effective in those areas. So it would probably be in the areas of communications and in the areas of procedures and in the areas of having staff officers with experience in those sorts of operations. The only way you get that is by either doing it or exercising it. I see Japan being very intelligent about it, for instance in its East Timor deployment it talked with some of our officers who have been in East Timor, talked with the Australians who had the initial effort, and they're going about it in the certain methodical way that you would expect.

But the major hardware, the ability to operate systems, that's -- Japan has the pieces of that at hand.

Question: President Bush's State of the Union address and the axis of evil remark took almost everybody by surprise. I think one of the things here that people might be concerned about is there's sort of this nightmare scenario that North Korea, being as unpredictable as it is, would use something like this as an excuse to maybe fire another missile. This is evidence to them that shift in thinking.

How much concern is there that North Korea will put all these pieces together and say we're under threat, or we need to do something, and then you'll have some other pocket of action?

Adm. Blair: I've learned that trying to predict North Korean behavior is a pretty fruitless exercise. You have to sort of deal with it where it lies and keep the deterrent part of it strong so that there are definitely limits on what North Korean can do, either in terms of military action or in terms of intimidation.

Question: Can you tell us about the USS Pueblo which is presumably still in North Korea? What is Washington's position on the actual possession of the ship? Is it something that we have requested or demanded or expect eventually to get back from North Korea?

Adm. Blair: Have any of you been to --

Question: I've been on it. Twice. Once in Pyongyang.

Adm. Blair: It's a museum isn't it? Right there --

Question: Bizarre. They've got red circles around every bullet hole, and --

Question: It got moved?

Question: They moved it, yeah, up onto the river there.

Adm. Blair: I'm not sure what my lawyers would tell me, but that's a U.S. ship that they took illegally and it's still ours. So I don't recognize their owning it.

Question: Is there any -- What's the situation with the MIA/POW issue there? Is there any progress?

Adm. Blair: We've had a couple of successful recovery missions. The latest set of negotiations, I'm trying to think. We had a negotiating team up there and the negotiations are stymied right now over the agreement on the procedures to move forward.

North Korea has cooperated somewhat in the past but it certainly is not the kind of program that we are running now in Southeast Asia. I just came from Hanoi and in fact visited one of our sites north of there. Here's a country we fought more recently than we did Korea, and yet there's a commitment on both sides to try to do the humanitarian thing and find out what happened to our service people who died there, and by the same token we're assisting them to find out what happened to theirs, which is a much larger number than there is of ours -- about 2,000 American people missing in Southeast Asia and about 300,000 Vietnamese service people mission. We both want to account for all of them.

We're not to that stage with North Korea. We're very much just beginning on that operation. I think that would be a pretty good indicator of a more sort of normal relationship with both sides doing what ought to be done by the families of those who have lost people. We're not there yet by a long shot.

Question: Do you envision setting up the kind of joint task force office the way you did in Hanoi? Even before there were diplomatic relations with North Korea?

Adm. Blair: We're ready not to allow protocol and niceties to determine how we proceed. We're ready to get the job done. I'm sure we could make arrangements which would be effective from our point of view as we get agreement on that. So I know that is very much the commitment of all of us.

Question: You mentioned Vietnam. What is the state of cooperation between the two countries in military matters? I understand there's going to be some participation or perhaps observation of American-led training exercise sometime in the spring. Are there talks about using Cam Ranh Bay eventually? Are there talks aimed at inviting the Vietnamese to actually participate in exercises?

Adm. Blair: Yes, in the future on both of those accounts.

This was my first trip to Vietnam. I never actually served there. I was headed toward Vietnam on my ship when the U.S./North Vietnamese part of it ended in '72.

But the main way that we've been cooperating with Vietnam has really been legacy missions. We've been providing demining teams, unexploded ordnance assistance. We've been cooperating on the Joint Task Force Full Accounting; we talked about scientific research on Agent Orange. Most of our interaction has been on sort of handling the legacy of the war that ended 25 years ago.

I had a fascinating meeting with General Giap who of course was the leader of Vietnam's struggle with the French and then with us. He's very much looking to the future. He introduced me to his children, all of whom have studied abroad and one of whom runs an IT company in Vietnam. But he's looking to the future.

That was a prospect I raised with the Vietnamese armed forces, that there are areas in which the nations of Southeast Asia are working together and which we're practicing in the Cobra Gold exercise and their peacekeeping operations and humanitarian assistance and non-combatant evacuation and countering piracy and countering terrorism and international crime and countering drugs. The Vietnamese are doing some of that but they haven't really stepped out. They're concentrating more on internal development than they are on reaching out, but they're beginning to. They send students to our Asia Pacific Center of Security Studies in Honolulu where they meet with a lot of other regional officers and security officials from Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Ministries of Defense. They've got good contributing students there that I've talked with. They will send an observer team to the Cobra Gold exercise where we practice all of these new missions. Of course they are a powerful country within Southeast Asia and they've just joined not long ago and they're sort of feeling their way through.

So I got the sense that they were moving into the future but it's early for them yet. I certainly sense that there's a willingness and desire to cooperate with the United States in particular.

Question: Perhaps including the two points of Cam Ranh and eventual participation --

Adm. Blair: Oh, yeah, on Cam Ranh Bay, they were just coming to grips with the early Russian cancellation of its base. They told me that they are thinking what they're going to do in terms of both the naval base and commercial development and questions of who visits and whether other military activities might take place with other countries there or for the future. I told them that we know a lot about Cam Ranh Bay. I said we built it and it's a very fine port, and as we resume -- We haven't had a port visit with Vietnam yet, other countries have. It would be a good port to visit.

Question: There was a report last week about a possible Cole-style attempt on the Blue Ridge in Brunei. 7th Fleet people said it wasn't anything. Do you have any more information on that? And can you also speak to the larger issue of danger in ports that we previously thought were safe?

Adm. Blair: The larger issue is that the Cole showed that it can be done. The ring of terrorists, the JI Group that was arrested in Singapore had some charts of the waters around Singapore. It's clear they were thinking about U.S. ships. So attacking U.S. ships either in port or in close waters is an operation that al Qaida and its sympathizing groups are thinking about.

We're not going to be driven out of visiting ports. We think visiting ports is important, and we think that a combination of the defensive measures, security measures that our hosts can take plus the inner perimeters and all that we do ourselves can give us enough protection to be able to make the visits and preserve the good parts of those port visits which are the interaction with our host nations and also good liberty. So we intend to press on, taking a sensible approach to this. Our ports here in Japan are very safe.

Question: Thank you very much.

Adm. Blair: Thank you. I look forward to seeing you again.

(end transcript)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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