Junichiro Koizumi Quotes

We aim to achieve general progress in relations between North Korea and Japan.

Japan continues to work closely with the United States on the issue of the North Korean nuclear crisis and has played an important and constructive role in the Six-Party talks.

Japan had become a general object of distrust and misunderstanding; a fact not only deeply injurious to Japan, but very unfortunate for foreign nations, whose policy in the Far East is influenced thereby. It was the duty of the nation to inspire a spirit of confidence and good-will among its friends abroad

I'm in favor of dealing with Iran and dealing with the nuclear issue, but I'm not in favor of a bad deal.

We want to have diplomatic engagement with the North Koreans.

The president had a press conference about this this week and he said that the U.S. has no plans to attack North Korea. And then he added, 'Like having no plan ever stopped me before.'. He has something even more deadly in store for them - we're going to bring them democracy.

You have North Korea, you have nuclear weapons, and China could solve that problem. And they're not helping us at all.

If they think they can get anyone who could have better handled the complex and difficult issues surrounding North Korea, Iran and other controversies, they are not understanding the world right now.

We want full-scale normalisation of relations [with Japan].

I think it's very important to follow the lead of the South Koreans and the Chinese and not back North Korea even further into a corner, because that's when they'll be dangerous.

Yet our interests, the interests of the Russian Federation, include the normalisation of relations with Japan, which is not at the bottom of the agenda. The whole range of what will be proposed for a solution, the entire range of matters related to the normalisation of our relations and what that would bring after normalisation, this is the whole range of issues to be discussed and decided, and those decisions should be of a practical nature.

We do not trade territories although concluding a peace treaty with Japan is certainly a key issue and we would like to find a solution to this problem together with our Japanese friends.

The absence of a peace treaty [with Japan] is an anachronism we inherited from the past and it must be removed. However, how to do this is a complicated issue.

Japan and China are isolated and without intercourse with other countries; hence the President directed me to attend to or watch the state of affairs in China also.

I have spent time discussing the American political system and current events in Taiwan with the junior diplomats, and they have repeatedly expressed their country's desire to avoid confrontation with China.

The U.S. engages with North Korea, so I don't see why they can't engage with Iran.

Wishful thinking won't make the Palestinians an Israeli peace partner, no matter how much President Barack Obama pressures Israel to make concessions; caustically mocking Putin's worldview won't make it any less real or mitigate the Russian threat.

I would not suggest the U.S. should sit down with the North Koreans bilaterally immediately after they've fired missiles - because the appearance is that you reward bad behavior. But if North Korea behaves for some period of time, I would pretty much favor direct talks.

Many critics of the Palestinians, especially those in Congress, think the current calm is merely the eye of the storm. That's why the House of Representatives approved a foreign aid package last week that forbade the direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority .

This fact lays on us - so long as the maintenance of good relations with Russia seems to us worth an effort - the duty of satisfying Russia that she has no need to fear any invasion of her sphere of interests on Germany's part.

I've been arguing this for months. This is not our war. This is not a war we should be in. Australia's better spending its time negotiating with North Korea.

And so there has been a lot of diplomatic movement.

The core of detente [with Russia] is the reduction in arms.

If the condition of our relations with other nations is less gratifying than it has usually been at former periods, it is certainly more satisfactory than a nation so unhappily distracted as we are might reasonably apprehended.

Resolved that there be held a conference of the white nations bordering upon the Pacific for unity of action against the aggression of Japan.