*Japan PM says
TPP trade pact meaningless without U.S.
The
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be meaningless without U.S.
participation, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday as U.S.
President-elect Donald
Trump said he would withdraw the United States from the
pan-Pacific free trade deal.
Abe, who
attended a gathering of TPP leaders in Lima on Saturday, said there was no
discussion at the meeting that other members should try to put the TPP into
effect without the United States, Abe told reporters in Buenos Aires.
"The TPP
would be meaningless without the United States," Abe said.
Trump released
a video on Monday laying out actions he would take on his first day in office
on Jan. 20, including withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership.
Trump
campaigned for the U.S. presidency on a promise to pull out of the 12-nation
trade deal, calling it a job-killing "disaster."
Abe, who met
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to discuss economic cooperation and
a decades-old territorial row, stressed at the Buenos Aires news conference his
resolve to put an end to the island dispute under his leadership.
"This is
the problem that cannot be solved without the relationship of trust between
leaders," Abe said.
"I will
be directly communicating with President Putin and make progress one solid step
at a time."
The
territorial row over the chain of western Pacific islands, seized by Soviet
troops at the end of World War Two, has upset diplomatic ties ever since,
precluding a formal peace treaty between Tokyo and Moscow.
Reuters
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