Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi agreed with U.S. and South Korean officials in Tokyo Monday on the need to continue trilateral cooperation in their policies toward North Korea. It is highly significant that Obuchi's agreement with U.S. policy coordinator William Perry and South Korean Unification Minister Lim Dong Won came on the same day that the Diet enacted a legislative package covering the updated Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines.

The guidelines were compiled on the basis of a joint declaration on security issued at a 1996 Japan-U.S. summit. The summit was held against the background of mounting security concerns over the Korean Peninsula stemming from Pyongyang's suspected development of nuclear arms. Under the summit agreement, Japan and the United States sought to strengthen their alliance to enhance security in the post-Cold War Asia-Pacific region. The new defense guidelines and bills covering them were means for implementing agreements in the joint declaration. The defense guidelines had been pending since Perry was defense secretary.

The legislative package included three bills: to authorize the Self-Defense Forces to provide rear-area support to U.S. forces in cases of emergency near Japan, to amend the SDF law to allow the use of SDF ships for evacuation of war-displaced Japanese residents overseas and to revise the Japan-U.S. Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement. The bills are intended to strengthen the deterrent by upgrading the Japan-U.S. security alliance.