The U.. S and Japanese navies said Friday they completed a four-day joint exercise in the East China Sea, as tension\u2026<\/b>
TOKYO \u2014
The U.. S and Japanese navies said Friday they completed a four-day joint exercise in the East China Sea, as tension intensifies in the region following North Korea\u2019s missile tests.
The training, characterised by Japanese media essentially as a show-of-force exercise, coincided with renewed tensions in the region after North Korea\u2019s latest ballistic missile launches earlier this week.
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and the guided missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer from the U. S. Navy joined the Japanese destroyers Sazanami and Samidare in the East China Sea to \u201cincrease proficiency in basic maritime skills and improve response capabilities,\u201d the U. S. Navy said in a statement.
Japan\u2019s Maritime Self-Defense Force, the country\u2019s navy, said in a separate statement that the exercises focused on \u201ctactical training\u201d, without elaborating
But Japan\u2019s conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper said the drill was aimed at issuing a warning against nuclear-armed North Korea by \u201cexhibiting the strength and deterrent power of the Japan-U. S. alliance.\u201d
The joint drill commenced a day after North Korea launched four ballistic missiles on Monday, with three landing provocatively close to Japan, which the U. S. is obligated to defend under a security treaty.
Pyongyang has claimed the launch was a training exercise for a strike on U. S. bases in Japan and supervised by leader Kim Jong-Un.
Seoul and Washington are separately carrying out annual joint military exercises in South Korea.
The Japan-U. S. training was also meant to display their joint presence in the East China Sea, where Japan and China are locked in a long-running dispute over uninhabited islets, the Sankei said.
In Japan they are known as the Senkakus, while China claims then as the Diaoyus.
Successive U. S. administrations have assured Japan that the islands fall under their security treaty, meaning if they are attacked the U. S. will defend them.
The Carl Vinson was expected to join the South Korea-U. S. drills after the exercise with Japan, the Sankei said.
The two sets of exercises come as U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is set to visit South Korea, Japan and China next week for his first trip to the region since he became President Donald Trump\u2019s top diplomat.
The U. S. Pacific Command said Monday that the Americans had begun deploying the THAAD anti-system to South Korea, which is designed to defend the U. S. ally from a North Korean attack.
The deployment has outraged Pyongyang ally China, which strongly opposes it as a challenge to its security ambitions in the region.
China responded that it was \u201cfirmly opposed\u201d to the deployment and vowed to \u201cresolutely take necessary measures\u201d to defend its security interests.
China has argued that the deployment would further destabilise the situation on the Korean peninsula.
\u00a9 2017 AFP<\/p>\n