US has not asked Japan to host missile systems, PM Abe says

Washington has not addressed Tokyo with proposals for deploying US missile systems in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, on Thursday.

“As far as US missile systems in Japan are concerned, Japan has not received any proposals for their deployment,” he said.

Abe said that “Japan’s current missile defense system is not governed by the US” and the new systems being purchased from the US manufacturers, Aegis Ashore, “will be controlled by Japan,” according to TASS.

The PM says the situation in Japan is different from that in South Korea and Poland, where the US runs the missile defense systems on its own.