Politics & Government

Kishida Meets with Palau President in N.Y.

REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/Pool
President of Palau Surangel Whipps Jr. reacts on the day of the opening ceremony of the Summit on Peace in Ukraine at the Buergenstock Resort in Stansstad near Lucerne, Switzerland, June 15, 2024.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida looks on during a Cancer Moonshot event at the Quad leaders summit in Claymont, Delaware, U.S., September 21, 2024.

Jiji Press

15:26 JST, September 23, 2024

New York (Jiji Press)—Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held talks with Surangel Whipps Jr., president of Palau, a Pacific island nation, in New York on Sunday.

In the meeting that lasted about 35 minutes, Kishida said a recent Japan-China agreement that China will ease its all-out import ban on Japanese fisheries products represents an important step toward full removal of the restrictions.

China introduced the blanket ban just after the August 2023 start of the release into the sea of treated water containing radioactive tritium from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station in northeastern Japan.

Kishida thanked Whipps for continuing to place trust in the water release operation.

The Fukushima No. 1 plant was heavily damaged in the March 2011 powerful earthquake and tsunami.