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US President Joe Biden planning Asia trip, with eye on China and North Korea issues: official
- US officials have said Biden has accepted an invitation to visit Japan in late spring to attend the summit of the Quad, but details were still being worked out
- The trip could be in May, with concerns over China and North Korea on top of the agenda, a source says
US officials have said Biden has accepted an invitation to visit Japan in late spring to attend the summit of the Quad – which groups Japan, the US, Australia and India – but details were still being worked out.
Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper on Tuesday cited multiple government sources as saying the Tokyo visit could be in the last half of May.
“The President will travel later this year to Tokyo for the Quad Summit, as part of our commitment to regularise our engagement through the Quad, which continues to operate at full speed,” the senior US official told Reuters in an email.
“The President will also make several other stops on that trip,” added the official, who declined to elaborate.
![US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Photo: AP](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2022/02/03/85ec4201-fa41-4255-b544-7cdbf8a6f7e3_6137ae59.jpg)
It would, at the same time, finalise negotiations on Compacts of Free Association: agreements with three Pacific Island countries – the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau – that facilitate US military access. They are due to expire in 2023 in the case of the former two states and in 2024 in the case of Palau.
US Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell warned last month the Pacific could be the part of the world most likely to see “strategic surprise” – comments apparently referring to possible Chinese ambitions to establish Pacific-island bases.
Campbell said the US had not done enough to assist the region and that there was a very short amount of time, working with partners like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and fellow Pacific power France, “to step up our game across the board”.
Biden has visited the region multiple times during his more than three decades as a senator and as vice-president in the Obama administration.
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