Already comments Xi Jinping made about the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands during last week’s Xi-Obama summit are reverberating back across the Pacific to Japan, where Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has denied Xi called the islands a “core interest.”

Japan has denied Chinese President Xi Jinping termed the Senkaku islands ‘a core interest’ of China in his informal summit with U.S. President Barack Obama last week in California.

 

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga brushed aside the reports during a Wednesday news conference, indicating Tokyo was briefed otherwise by U.S. officials about the Xi-Obama meeting.

But the Japanese, it seems, aren’t taking any chances. They plan to develop an elite force designed to retake islands in the event of an invasion. The article notes that they are years away from this.

Abe and Obama spoke recently by phone. The Japanese indicated that even if Xi called the Senkaku Islands a “core interest” that observation was not passed along by Obama to Xi.