Obama aide spurns talk of Japan rift

Life is too short to track down the origin or the meaning of such asinine statements.

US President Barack Obama's top Asia adviser on Friday brushed aside talk of a rift with Japan ahead of next week's summit, voicing confidence that the new government in Tokyo backed the US alliance.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan ended a half-century of nearly unbroken conservative rule in August elections, has called for a less subservient relationship to the United States.

Hatoyama has sought a fresh look at a controversial deal on US military bases, an issue bound to come up when Obama next week heads to Japan on the first leg of his first presidential trip to Asia.

Jeff Bader, the senior director for East Asian Affairs on the White House's National Security Council, said that the United States as a democracy was fully aware that new governments seek policy changes.

- I think it's a healthy relationship that Japan, great democracy in Asia, is actually experiencing a transition in power and is going through some of the difficulty that we all experience - Bader said at the Brookings Institution.

- It does make managing the relationship require more attention, it requires sensitivity to different perspectives than we're used to dealing with - he said.

- But we have complete confidence that this is a party that is committed to the US-Japan relationship, that's committed to the alliance, and that this trip by President Obama will highlight that - he said.

Bader rebuked a Washington Post report, which was widely cited by Japanese media, that quoted an unnamed State Department official as saying that Japan, not China, had become the most difficult US relationship in Asia.

- Life is too short to track down the origin or the meaning of such asinine statements - Bader said.