Japanese ministers say they are not pursuing PM's “Asian NATO” proposal

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo via Grey Dynamics

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan's foreign and defence ministers said on Wednesday they are not working on a proposal by Japan's new prime minister to establish an "Asian NATO", as the U.S. and India had rejected the idea.

Shigeru Ishiba made the proposal ahead of his victory in the ruling party leadership election on Friday, arguing that it would bolster security in Asia.

But on Tuesday, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar expressed scepticism saying Delhi did not share Ishiba's vision. Last month, Daniel Kritenbrink, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific said it was too early to discuss such a proposal.

"I think it's one idea for the future. It's difficult to immediately set up a mechanism that would impose mutual defence obligations in Asia," Japan's foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya told a news conference in Tokyo.

Such a framework would not be aimed at any specific country, Iwaya added when asked whether it was targeting China.

"In his instructions yesterday, the prime minister did not mention anything about considering something like an Asian version of NATO," defence minister Gen Nakatani said in his first press conference after being appointed by Ishiba.

In a paper to the Hudson Institute thinktank last month, Japan's new leader argued that locking the U.S. and other friendly nations into an "Asian NATO" would deter China from using military force in Asia.

The organization, he said, could encompass separate groups and alliances such as the QUAD group of India and the U.S., Japan and Australia and the trilateral security partnership between, Washington, Tokyo and Seoul.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami; Editing by Tom Hogue, Clarence Fernandez and Kim Coghill)