Obama: I am America's first Pacific president
Barack Obama reaffirms alliance with US and Japan at start of weeklong Asia trip
Saturday, 14, Nov 2009 10:40
By Matthew Champion.
Barack Obama underlined his Pacificist credentials on Saturday at the start of a weeklong Asian trip when he told an audience in Japan that events in Asia have a "direct effect" on the day-to-day lives of the American people.
Speaking in Tokyo he described himself as America's "first Pacific president" on account of his birth in Hawaii, childhood in Indonesia and a boyhood trip to Japan. President Obama also gave special mention to the residents of his namesake town of Obama in Fukui prefecture.
Hailing the US' connections with Asia, the president praised the "enduring and revitalised alliance between the United States and Japan" to warm applause.
"This is where we engage in much of our commerce and buy many of our goods," he said in the Japanese capital's Suntory Hall on his first trip to Asia since being inaugurated in January.
"And this is where we can export more of our own products and create jobs back home in the process.
"This is a place where the risk of a nuclear arms race threatens the security of the wider world, and where extremists who defile a great religion plan attacks on both our continents. And there can be no solution to our energy security and our climate challenge without the rising powers and developing nations of the Asia Pacific."
President Obama, who has already held talks with new Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama and the country's emperor and empress, urged China to use its economic strength to join the fight against climate change and warned North Korea its strong-arm tactics would not succeed.
"The rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations," he said.
"And so, in Beijing and beyond, we will work to deepen our strategic and economic dialogue."
In the course of the next week Mr Obama is due to make stopovers in Singapore, China and South Korea. He plans to meet with leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and will also become the first US president to take part in a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).