SINGAPORE (Kyodo) -- Japan's defense minister made a renewed call on Saturday for China and North Korea to act in line with existing international norms for the peace and stability of the region.
While there is little prospect in the near future that China will stop seeking expansion in regional waters and that North Korea will give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Tomomi Inada, in her speech in Singapore, warned that the established rules-based order has come under challenge.
"To be sure, international rules must adapt and evolve in order to stay relevant to changing circumstances, but not in a parochial, disruptive, disorderly way," Inada said at Asia's annual premier security forum, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue. "No country benefits from forcefully altering the prevailing rules-based order."
Without mentioning China by name, she criticized its aggressive activities in the East and South China seas.
"We continue to witness unprovoked, unilateral attempts to alter the status quo based on assertions incompatible with existing international norms," she said. "In the East China Sea, government ships of a certain country continue to make periodic incursions into Japanese territorial waters."
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