TOKYO — After easing into his Asian debut with golf and a taste of home, President Donald Trump is trying to put a human face on North Korea’s menace, hearing from anguished families of Japanese citizens snatched by Pyongyang’s agents.
Trump’s meeting Monday promises to elevate these heart-wrenching tales of loss to the international stage as he hopes to pressure North Korea to end its provocative behavior toward American allies in the region.
North Korea has acknowledged apprehending 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, but claims all those captives have died or been released. But in Japan, where grieving relatives of the abducted have become a symbol of heartbreak on the scale of American POW families, the government insists nearly 50 people were taken — and believes some may be alive.
Trump has delivered harsh denunciations of the renegade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, belittling him as “Little Rocket Man” and threatening to rain “fire and fury” on his country if the belligerence continues. But Trump also has begun highlighting the plight of the North Koreans.
“I think they’re great people. They’re industrious. They’re warm, much warmer than the world really knows or understands,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One while flying to Japan on Sunday. “And I hope it all works out for everybody.”
Also on the agenda during Trump’s second day in Asia: an audience with Emperor Akihito, a sit-down with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a state dinner.
North Korea is the critical issue looming over Trump’s 12-day, five-country trip that will include direct talks with Trump’s Chinese and Russian counterparts.
In Washington, a new analysis emerged from the Pentagon saying that a ground invasion of North Korea is the only way to locate and destroy, with complete certainty, all components of Kim’s nuclear weapons program.
“It is the most bleak assessment,” said U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Two members of the U.S. Congress, in a letter to the Pentagon, had asked about casualty assessments in a possible conflict with North Korea. A rear admiral on the Joint Staff responded on behalf of the Defense Department, and said the amount of casualties would differ depending on the advance warning and the ability of U.S. and South Korea forces to counter North Korean attacks.
Feinstein said she was pleased that America’s top diplomat, Rex Tillerson, was on the Asia trip. “I think if he will stay the course and use diplomacy the way diplomacy can be used, that it might be possible to work something out. The worst alternative is a war, which could become nuclear,” she said.
Abe welcomed Trump on Sunday with an effusive display of friendship that will now give way to high-stakes diplomacy. The two leaders, who have struck up an unlikely but easy rapport, shared a casual lunch and played nine holes at the Kasumigaseki Country Club, joined by professional golfer Hideki Matsuyama.
Abe was one of the first world leaders to court President-elect Trump. The prime minister was the first to call after the 2016 election, and rushed to New York days later to meet Trump and present him with a pricey, gold Honma golf driver.
The two men also met on the sidelines of an international summit in Italy this spring and Trump hosted Abe in Florida. White House officials said Trump has spoken with Abe by phone more than any world leader, aside from British Prime Minister Theresa May.
“The relationship is really extraordinary. We like each other and our countries like each other,” Trump said before dinner with Abe, who for this meal did show Trump traditional cuisine with a teppanyaki dinner. “And I don’t think we’ve ever been closer to Japan than we are right now.”
Abe told reporters after the golf session that the two could talk frankly in a relaxed atmosphere while out on the course. He said they were able to “carry out in depth discussion, at times touching on various difficult issues.”
From the time Marine One landed on the Kasumigaseki Country Club’s driving range, Abe rolled out little touches to make Trump feel welcome. He presented a hat that had a version of Trump’s campaign theme, this time reading “Donald and Shinzo: Make Alliance Even Greater.” The two passed up the region’s Kobe beef in favor of the American version, which is favored by Trump, a picky eater.
Ever since Saudi Arabia delivered a lavish welcome on Trump’s first international trip, leaders have tried to outdo themselves to impress the president, who has proven susceptible to flattery.
And while there is worry in the region about Trump’s unpredictable response to the threat posed by Kim, Trump made clear he did not intend to tone down his bellicose rhetoric even while in an Asian capital within reach of the North Korea dictator’s missiles.
“There’s been 25 years of total weakness, so we are taking a very much different approach,” he said, speaking to reporters on Air Force One.
The easy rapport with Japan could be strained if Trump takes an aggressive approach on trade or Trump and Abe disagree on how best to approach North Korea.
During his campaign, Trump suggested Japan should acquire its own nuclear weapons to defend itself, hinted the U.S. might not come to the nation’s defense, and accused Japan of “killing us” on trade. He has dropped that antagonist language almost entirely since the election, but tensions remain.
___
Associated Press writers Ken Moritsugu, James Armstrong and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Catherine Lucey in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire and Colvin at http://twitter.com/@colvinj
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Image caption
The leaks show about £10m of the Queen’s private money was invested offshore
A huge new leak of financial documents has revealed how the powerful and ultra-wealthy, including the Queen’s private estate, secretly invest vast amounts of cash in offshore tax havens.
Donald Trump’s commerce secretary is shown to have a stake in a firm dealing with Russians sanctioned by the US.
The leak, dubbed the Paradise Papers, contains 13.4m documents, mostly from one leading firm in offshore finance.
BBC Panorama is part of nearly 100 media groups investigating the papers.
Sunday’s revelations form only a small part of a week of disclosures that will expose the tax and financial affairs of some of the hundreds of people and companies named in the data, some with strong UK connections.
Many of the stories focus on how politicians, multinationals, celebrities and high-net-worth individuals use complex structures of trusts, foundations and shell companies to protect their cash from tax officials or hide their dealings behind a veil of secrecy.
Media captionParadise Papers: How to hide your cash offshore
The vast majority of the transactions involve no legal wrongdoing.
Other key stories being released on Sunday are:
A key aide of Canada’s PM has been linked to offshore schemes that may have cost the nation millions of dollars in taxes, threatening to embarrass Justin Trudeau, who has campaigned to shut tax havens. Read the full story here
Lord Ashcroft, a former Conservative party deputy chairman and a significant donor, may have ignored rules around how his offshore investments were managed. Read the full story here Other papers suggest he retained his non-dom status while in the House of Lords, despite reports he had become a permanent tax resident in the UK. Read the full story here
How questions were raised about the funding of a major shareholding in Everton FC. Read the full story here
The papers suggest oligarch Alisher Usmanov may influence due diligence checks on his own firms. Read the full story here
The other media partners may be covering different stories affecting their regions.
How is the Queen involved?
The Paradise Papers show that about £10m ($13m) of the Queen’s private money was invested offshore.
It was put into funds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda by the Duchy of Lancaster, which provides the Queen with an income and handles investments for her £500m private estate.
There is nothing illegal in the investments and no suggestion that the Queen is avoiding tax, but questions may be asked about whether the monarch should be investing offshore.
There were small investments in the rent-to-buy retailer BrightHouse, which has been accused of exploiting the poor, and the Threshers chain of off-licences, which later went bust owing £17.5m in tax and costing almost 6,000 people their jobs.
Image copyright Alamy
Image caption
The Queen’s private estate had a very small investment in the retailer BrightHouse
The Duchy said it was not involved in decisions made by funds and there is no suggestion the Queen had any knowledge of the specific investments made on her behalf.
The Duchy has in the past said it gives “ongoing consideration regarding any of its acts or omissions that could adversely impact the reputation” of the Queen, who it says takes “a keen interest” in the estate. Read the full story here
Embarrassment for Ross and Trump?
Wilbur Ross helped stave off bankruptcy for Donald Trump in the 1990s and was later appointed commerce secretary in Mr Trump’s administration.
The documents reveal Mr Ross has retained an interest in a shipping company which earns millions of dollars a year transporting oil and gas for a Russian energy firm whose shareholders include Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and two men subject to US sanctions.
It will again raise questions about the Russian connections of Donald Trump’s team. His presidency has been dogged by allegations that Russians colluded to try to influence the outcome of last year’s US election. He has called the allegations “fake news”. Read the full story here
Where does the leak come from?
Most of the data comes from a company called Appleby, a Bermuda-based legal services provider at the top end of the offshore industry, helping clients set up in overseas jurisdictions with low or zero tax rates.
Its documents, and others mainly from corporate registries in Caribbean jurisdictions, were obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung. It has not revealed the source.
The media partners say the investigation is in the public interest because data leaks from the world of offshore have repeatedly exposed wrongdoing.
In response to the leaks, Appleby said it was “satisfied that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, either on the part of ourselves or our clients”, adding: “We do not tolerate illegal behaviour.” Read the Appleby story here
What exactly is offshore finance?
Essentially it’s about a place outside of your own nation’s regulations to which companies or individuals can reroute money, assets or profits to take advantage of lower taxes.
These jurisdictions are known as tax havens to the layman, or the more stately offshore financial centres (OFCs) to the industry. They are generally stable, secretive and reliable, often small islands but not exclusively so, and can vary on how rigorously they carry out checks on wrongdoing.
The UK is a big player here, not simply because so many of its overseas territories and Crown dependencies are OFCs, but many of the lawyers, accountants and bankers working in the offshore industry are in the City of London.
It’s also about the mega-rich. Brooke Harrington, author of Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent, says offshore finance is not for the 1% but the .001%. Assets of around $500,000 (£380,000) would just not meet the offshore fees the schemes would need, she says.
Well, it is a lot of cash. The Boston Consulting Group says $10tn is held offshore. That’s about the equivalent of the gross domestic products of the UK, Japan and France – combined. It may also be a conservative estimate.
Media captionLabour MP Meg Hillier: “If offshore wasn’t secret then this stuff couldn’t happen”
Critics of offshore say it is mainly about secrecy – which opens the door to wrongdoing – and inequality. They also say the action of governments to curb it has often been slow and ineffective.
Brooke Harrington says if the rich are avoiding tax, the poor pick up the bill: “There’s a minimal amount the governments need to function and they recoup what they lose from the rich and from corporations by taking it out of our hides.”
Meg Hillier, UK Labour MP and chair of the Public Accounts Committee, told Panorama: “We need to see what’s going offshore; if offshore was not secret then some of this stuff just couldn’t happen… we need transparency and we need sunlight shone on this.”
The offshore financial centres say that if they did not exist, there would be no constraint on taxes governments might levy. They say they do not sit on hoards of cash, but act as agents that help pump money around the globe.
Media captionEx-Bermuda Finance Minister defends tax practices
Bob Richards, who was Bermuda’s finance minister when Panorama interviewed him for its programme, said it was not up to him to collect other nations’ taxes and that they should sort themselves out.
Both he and Howard Quayle, the chief minister for the Isle of Man, who was also interviewed for Panorama and whose Crown dependency plays a big part in the leaks, denied their jurisdictions could even be considered tax havens as they were well regulated and fully conformed to international financial reporting rules.
Appleby itself has in the past said OFCs “protect people victimised by crime, corruption, or persecution by shielding them from venal governments”.
The papers are a huge batch of leaked documents mostly from offshore law firm Appleby, along with corporate registries in 19 tax jurisdictions, which reveal the financial dealings of politicians, celebrities, corporate giants and business leaders.
The 13.4 million records were passed to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Panorama has led research for the BBC as part of a global investigation involving nearly 100 other media organisations, including the Guardian, in 67 countries. The BBC does not know the identity of the source.
