CAMP DAVID: US President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea said they saw a "new chapter" of close three-way security cooperation as the Asian allies joined a first-of-a-kind summit that has already rattled China.
Going tieless at the bucolic Camp David presidential retreat, Biden praised the "political courage" of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in turning the page on historical animosity.
"Your leadership, with the full support of the United States, has brought us here because each of you understands that our world stands at an inflection point," Biden told a joint news conference in the wooded hills outside Washington.
The two US allies largely see eye to eye on the world -- and together are the base for some 84,500 US troops -- but such a summit would have been unthinkable until recently due to the legacy of Japan's harsh 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.
But Yoon has turned the page by resolving a dispute over wartime forced labor, and is now calling Japan a partner at a time of high tensions with both China and North Korea.
Yoon said he hoped to be "forward-looking" and called the summit a "historic day" in bringing a "firm institutional basis" to the three nations' joint relationship.
The three leaders also agreed to a multi-year plan of regular exercises in all domains, going beyond one-off drills in response to North Korea, and made a formal "commitment to consult" during crises, with Biden saying they would open a hotline.
Tensions have risen with North Korea, which has launched a volley of missiles in recent months and is feared to respond to the summit with new action.
The leaders' joint statement renewed a call on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and urged all nations to enforce sanctions.
As the Camp David summit opened, North Korea said it had scrambled jets in response to what it called a US spy plane's incursion.
Tokyo and Seoul have offered a major boost to Ukraine as major non-Western powers joining pressure against Russia's invasion.
"Due to Russia's aggression of Ukraine, the international order is shaken from its foundation. The unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force in the East and South China Seas are continuing and the nuclear and missile threats of North Korea are only becoming even greater," Kishida said. — AFP
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