Japan and Finland agreed during their summit Tuesday to start negotiations on a pact to allow the transfer of defense equipment, citing the increasingly interconnected security environments of Europe and the Indo-Pacific region.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his Finnish counterpart, Petteri Orpo, opposed any unilateral attempts to change the status quo, the government said, in an apparent reference to Russia, China and North Korea, which has boosted military cooperation with Moscow.
In their first meeting as premiers, Ishiba noted that the bond between Japan and Finland, now a NATO member, has strengthened amid the “severe” state of global affairs, expressing hope for a further deepening of bilateral security ties.
Finland joined the NATO military alliance in April 2023 after its neighbor, Russia, invaded Ukraine a year earlier. Ishiba has raised concerns about the war’s implications for the Indo-Pacific region, where tensions are high between China and Taiwan.
Ishiba told Orpo, who described Japan as an important partner, that Tokyo seeks to bolster cooperation with Finland in cutting-edge technologies such as 6G mobile networks and supercomputing, the Japanese government said.