ار
CONFIDENTIAL
BRITISH EMBASSY,
TOKYO.
10
From the Ambassador
CD Powell Esq
No 10 Downing Street
London SW1
Dear Charles,
HKB 020 /13
PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT TO JAPAN
18 August 1989
Me Hall
OT2 DTI
ERD
HKD SEND
ECD(E)
Mr Seaton
مد مامعنا ملا
Mus
1. various elements of the programme for the Prime Minister's visit here and show how they would enable her to put across British concerns and interests to the Japanese. With a month to go to the visit, it seemed to me a good idea to begin fleshing out in a little more detail what our main themes should be and where, as seen from here, the emphasis should lie.
Kaifu's Position
My letter of 31 July was designed to pull together the (track 1
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2. As you will probably have seen from our telegrams, Kaifu is presiding over a cabinet designed to prepare for an extremely difficult Lower House election now most widely expected to take place in January 1990 although the timing is still uncertain. He lacks his own power-base in the party and will be lucky to last as Prime Minister much beyond the election unless the party does better than expected. He is said, rather unfairly, in the press to lack international experience. His first foreign policy foray will inevitably be to the United States, at the beginning of September. The Prime Minister's visit will be his second top level meeting of this sort. For all these reasons, the public presentation of his talks with her and of his own performance and relationship with her will be of considerable importance to him. He will wish to use the visit both to strengthen his own position and to demonstrate the LDP's competence in the international arena at a time when that of Miss Doi (leader of the Japan Socialist Party) will be coming under closer scrutiny. He himself is a serious politician from a reforming background. As we have reported, he has unusually close connections with Britain, particularly through the UK-Japan 2000 Group. I hope therefore that during the visit we can continue to give the general impression that Britain (ahead of its European partners) has fully taken on board the importance of building up much closer links with Japan and that we are particularly pleased to be able to do business with Kaifu as an old friend of Britain. The latest draft of the Prime Minister's speech seems to me to convey the right general tone: it is not for us to lecture a nation as successful as Japan has become but we do expect our serious and well thought-out points, eg on structural reforms, to be heeded by the Japanese.
-1- CONFIDENTIAL
24/5.
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