TOKYO: Japan plans to demand a cut in its contributions to the United Nations budget from 2007 after the failure of its high-profile campaign to win a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, a leading newspaper said on Sunday.
Tokyo had stepped up a decades-old drive for a permanent seat in recent months, but met with lukewarm support from the United States and hostility from China, which cites what it perceives as Japan's failure to atone for its wartime past.
With little prospect of a seat, the government believes it will no longer be able to ensure public support for shouldering almost 20 percent of the UN budget, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing government sources.
Japan is set to demand that permanent Security Council members should make financial contributions to match their status, an argument that is likely to face opposition from China and Russia, whose contributions would rise, the paper said.
Assuming that prime minister Koizumi wins Sunday's election, which polls indicate he is likely to do, his foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, would make a speech on the need to review UN contributions at a General Assembly meeting in New York starting on September 19, the Yomiuri said. |