Biden to host first-ever trilateral summit with Japan, S Korea

US President Joe Biden is using the presidential retreat at ‘Camp David’ by hosting the first-ever trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea in the face of shared security challenges, CNN reported.

President Joe Biden is using the presidential retreat at Camp David to help with a diplomatic mission – hosting the first-ever trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea, two countries that are putting aside a fraught history in the face of shared security challenges.

Biden’s summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is meant to serve as a show of force as the countries grapple with persistent provocative behaviour from North Korea.

It also comes as President Biden has sought to deepen ties with allies in the Indo-Pacific amid concerns about a rising China.

On Friday, Biden will host the leaders at the secluded getaway in the Catoctin Mountains in Maryland where they are set to deepen defence, technology and economic cooperation between the three countries, CNN reported citing senior administration officials.

The leaders will establish annual military exercises, including regular ballistic missile drills, and discuss new intelligence-sharing agreements, officials said. They will also take steps to set up a three-way hotline for the leaders to consult in crises and will formalize the trilateral summit, the first of its kind, as an annual event.

The summit will fall short of a producing a three-way collective defence agreement but will underscore “that a challenge to any one of the countries is a challenge to all of them,” CNN quoted a senior administration official as saying.

Notably, the gathering will also mark the first time when Biden is hosting foreign leaders at the Camp David retreat, a site of historic diplomatic negotiations for past presidents.

Biden will greet the leaders at Camp David on Friday morning for the trilateral meetings, and they are expected to hold a joint news conference at the end of the summit.

However, the prospect of trilateral progress between the countries was not always a given. The relationship between Seoul and Tokyo is trailed by decades of tension and mistrust, including a dispute between the two countries over forced labour by Japan during its occupation of Korea, as per CNN.

But in the face of persistent missile threats from North Korea and China’s military manoeuvering in the region, Kishida and Yoon have gone to great lengths to put aside those differences, including hosting a fence-mending summit in March, which was the first of its kind in 12 years.

US officials have credited that work as a key step in cementing the trilateral partnership once thought unimaginable.

“China’s entire strategy is based on the premise that America’s number one and number two ally in the region can’t get together and get on the same page,” CNN quoted Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, as saying at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday. He added the trilateral partnership is “a foundational piece that alters all calculations.”

Ahead of the summit, South Korea believes North Korea is preparing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch and other “provocations” around the gathering or the upcoming joint military drills between the US and South Korea set to begin next week, CNN reported citing a South Korean lawmaker briefed by the country’s intelligence service.

A senior administration official said the US anticipates criticism and reactions from Pyongyang and Beijing around the summit but said the President Biden’s focus is on “making sure that the region knows that this trilateral partnership is operating at a new level and as a fundamental force”.