Obama hails expanded US engagement in Asia

Tokyo: President Barack Obama declared on Saturday that an era of American disengagement in the globe's fastest-growing region is over and warned that the US and its Asian partners "will not be cowed" by North Korea's continued defiance over its nuclear weapons and other provocations.

Obama also said a robust China should be welcomed, not feared, as a powerful partner on urgent challenges. Addressing Americans' worries about the economic and security threat from China's rising might and Asians' skepticism about US leadership, the president said, "We welcome China's efforts to play a greater role on the world stage, a role in which their growing economy is joined by growing responsibility."

In a 40-minute speech, Obama offered incentives for North Korea to abandon the nuclear weapons it is believed to already have and the production programme it continues in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. He outlined a possible future of economic opportunity and greater global greater respect, saying, "this respect cannot be earned through belligerence."

"It should be clear where that path leads," Obama said. "We will continue to send a clear message through our actions, and not just our words: North Korea's refusal to meet its international obligations will lead only to less security, not more."

More broadly, the president's address to 1,500 prominent Japanese in a soaring downtown Tokyo concert hall was intended to showcase a United States that, under Obama's leadership, seeks deeper engagement in Asia. It was the fifth major foreign address of his 10-month presidency. He reached out to locals through several personal notes that delighted his audience, including calling himself "America's first Pacific president," referring to his boyhood time in Indonesia and travels in Asia, and saluting the residents of Obama, Japan.

Acknowledging Asia's growing power and the perceptions here of America's parallel decline, Obama aides had said the chief aim for his eight-day trip through Asia wasn't so much to bring home specific "deliverables" but to convincingly press the point that the US very much is in the Asian game.

Obama said Washington would work hard to strengthen alliances in Asia, such as with Japan and South Korea, build on newer ones with nations like China and Indonesia, and increase its participation with a burgeoning alphabet soup of Asian multilateral organisations. The involvement, the president said, is not just academic for Americans. It affects everyday, top-priority issues such as jobs, a cleaner environment and preventing dangerous weapons proliferation, he said.

"I want every American to know that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct effect on our lives at home," Obama said. "The fortunes of America and the Asia-Pacific have become more closely linked than ever before."