BANGKOK – Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will make a brief condolence visit to Japan next week following the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the State Department said Sunday.
Blinken will travel to Tokyo on Monday to pay his respects to the former leader and meet with senior Japanese officials before he returns to Washington from his trip to Asia.
“Secretary Blinken will travel to Tokyo, Japan, to pay his respects to the Japanese people on the death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and to meet with senior Japanese officials,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. “The U.S.-Japan alliance, the cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, has never been stronger.”
Blinken is on a pre-scheduled visit to Thailand and was in Indonesia on Friday for a meeting of G-20 foreign ministers in Bali when Abe was shot. He will be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Japan since Abe’s death.
In Bali on Saturday, Blinken said Abe’s killing was a “tragedy” for the world and, like many other current and former U.S. officials, praised the former prime minister’s vision.
“Prime Minister Abe was a transformational leader, a statesman, a man of truly global influence,” Blinken told reporters. He added that Abe’s death rocked the G-20 meeting, with many of his fellow foreign ministers expressing shock and distress at the news.
Shortly after Abe’s death was announced, Blinken met with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshihide Hayashi and South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin in Bali to review strategies primarily related to North Korea. During that meeting and Saturday’s meeting, Blinken again stressed the importance of the U.S.-Japan relationship.
“The Japan-U.S. alliance has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for decades, and as I said yesterday, Prime Minister Abe has really taken that partnership to new heights,” he said.
“The friendship between the people of Japan and the United States is equally unshakable,” Blinken said. “So we stand with the people of Japan, the prime minister’s family, in the wake of a truly shocking act of violence.”