|
On January 26, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano held a press conference following a cabinet meeting conducted that same day. He told reporters about the financial cooperation and actual preparations being made in order to dispatch the SDF to Haiti to carry out peace-keeping operations (PKO), as well as the cabinet committee meeting relating to the issue of global warming that had taken place following the cabinet meeting.
First of all, Hirano referred to the procedures required to dispatch the SDF to participate in the Haiti PKO mission, commenting on the timing of the formal Cabinet decision regarding the dispatch: “The Minister of Defense has issued an order to make preparations, and as soon as that plan has been drawn up (by the Minister of Defense), the cabinet decision will take place. Usually this would be one to two weeks, but I would like to make a decision as soon as possible.” Hirano added that the government intended to carry out the dispatch having completed the necessary coordination with the United Nations.
Next, Hirano reported on the cabinet committee meeting on global warming, saying participants had confirmed that Japan would engage in cuts of 25% in greenhouse gases provided that a fair and effective framework including all the major nations was created and ambitious targets set.
Hirano was asked for a response to an announcement by the credit ratings firm Standard & Poor’s that it would downgrade Japan’s credit rating for its sovereign debt from “stable” to “negative”. He replied, “As government of Japan, we will proceed with a more detailed version of the growth strategy we created at the end of last year. In the first half of the year, we will establish a mid-term fiscal framework and create a fiscal management strategy, and by doing show the way toward achieving healthy finances.”
|
