Japan Offers Support for East Asia Summit in Brunei

Tokyo, May 13 (Jiji Press)--Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday offered to cooperate with Brunei for a successful East Asia Summit meeting in the Southeast Asian country in late October. Japan wants to work together so that all meetings related to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are successful, Abe said in a meeting in Tokyo with Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, this year's chair of ASEAN. Bolkiah said that his country has been building a cooperative relationship with Japan mainly in the energy sector and that favorable relations are now expanding in other fields, including youth exchanges. Brunei exports some 90 pct of its natural gas to Japan, whose demand for fuel for thermal power generation is growing due to suspensions of nuclear power plants after the 2011 Fukushima accident. END