Japan PM Ishiba seeks meeting with Trump this month, following Abe example

By Yoshifumi Takemoto, Yukiko Toyoda and Tim Kelly

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba hopes to meet U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the United States this month, four sources said, in an attempt to emulate then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's close ties during Trump's first term.

The U.S. is Japan's most important economic and security partner, while Tokyo is a key Washington ally in Asia, providing bases that allow it to keep a large military presence on China's doorstep.

Ishiba told reporters he had held a five-minute phone call with Trump on Thursday morning Japan time and that they agreed to meet as soon as possible.

"I felt that he was very friendly. So from now on, I have the impression that we can talk frankly," he said.

Three of the people familiar with the planning, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Japan was aiming to arrange a meeting between Ishiba and Trump just after a Nov. 18-19 summit of the Group of 20 large economies in Brazil. The fourth source said Japan was aiming to arrange the stopover "around" the G20 meeting.

Trump's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ishiba wants to follow the example of Abe, the first foreign leader to meet with Trump after his 2016 election. Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, held the hastily arranged meeting at Trump Tower in New York during a stopover just over a week after that election.

Abe forged a close personal relationship with Trump, including hours on the golf course, which helped defuse several contentious issues between the allies, including defence spending and trade.

Ahead of Tuesday's U.S. election, Japanese officials had been stepping up efforts to rekindle relations with people close to Trump, fearing he might again hit Japan with protectionist trade measures such as tariffs on steel, and revive demands for Tokyo to pay more toward the cost of stationing U.S. forces in the country if he returned to office.

Trump has said a decades-old bilateral security treaty is unfair because it commits the United States to defend Japan but does not put similar obligations on Tokyo.

"If Trump says something like Japan is not pulling its weight in the alliance and dealing with not just China but also North Korea, then you could see a movement toward changing that alliance," said Derek Grossman, senior defence analyst at RAND.

Asked about the troop costs on Thursday, Ishiba said he and Trump did not discuss it in their call. "Rather than focus on monetary amounts, we would like to vigorously discuss the strengthening of the Japan-U.S. alliance from various perspectives," he said.

Former U.S. official Michael Green said Trump "approaches every problem beginning with the question of what is in it for him. That makes allies nervous".

People around Trump, such as William Hagerty, ambassador to Japan during his first term and now a U.S. senator from Tennessee, could play a pivotal role in managing the Japan-U.S. alliance, said Green, who heads the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

But unlike Abe, who led a stable administration as Japan's longest-serving prime minister, Ishiba heads a coalition that lost its parliamentary majority in an election late last month.

"Given the instability in Tokyo right now, I am not sure Ishiba enjoys these same things that enabled Abe to succeed," said Kevin Maher, a consultant who previously headed the U.S. State Department's Office of Japan Affairs. "He was the right person at the right time."

(Reporting by Takemoto Yoshifumi, Yukiko Toyoda and Satoshi Sugiyama in Tokyo and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Michael Perry and William Mallard)