Dr. Sukehiro Hasegawa, Former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Timor-Leste, lectured on the UN reform at the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The gist of his lecture and our discussion was as follows:
The ‘Enemy State Clauses’ still remain in the UN Charter, and the Japanese government has been examining how to remove these clauses from the UN Charter as one of Japan’s policies on the UN reform. However, it is better to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’. In other words, we had better not touch on this issue for the time being. We should rather discuss this issue together with the argument for Japan’s becoming permanent membership in the UN Security Council (UNSC) with the U.S. led by President Trump in a timely manner, expecting its powerful cooperation as a permanent member of the UNSC. The ‘enemy states’ are primarily Germany, Italy, and Japan.
