INTERVIEW: Japan Should Lead Efforts toward U.S.-Iran Ceasefire

Tokyo, April 5 (Jiji Press)--Japan should take a proactive role in realizing an early ceasefire over military conflicts between the U.S.-Israeli forces and Iran by boosting multilateral cooperation, Jitsuro Terashima, chairman of the Japan Research Institute, has said.

"What matters is how Japan can determine the position and strategy that should be taken, when the logic of power is rampant," Terashima, who has experience in information gathering and analysis on the Middle East region, said in a recent interview with Jiji Press.

"Too many Japanese people only see the Middle East in the context of energy," Terashima said. "This is the limitation of Japanese people's understanding of the region."

Terashima said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had visited him to exchange opinions on nuclear issues in 2010, when he was the Iranian ambassador to Japan.

Araghchi told him that Iran wants to view Japan as a model that uses nuclear energy peacefully while owning a large amount of plutonium.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]