美國國務卿賴斯在接受《紐約郵報》采訪時表示，由安倍晉三領導的日本新任內閣有助于中日關系的改善。當問及日本改憲是否會衍生出核問題時，賴斯表示她并不肯定。

Japan's prime minister-in-waiting Shinzo Abe (C) shakes hands with newly appointed executives of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party at the party headquarters in Tokyo September 25, 2006. [Reuters] Under just-appointed conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan will likely "start to move" closer to China, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview. "I think that you will see Prime Minister Abe try to make some improvements and I think the Chinese will be receptive to that," Rice told The New York Post. Rice said Japan and China "don't lack contacts" through regional fora, and recently agreed to settle a border dispute in the East China Sea. "It may sound like a minor matter, but it's not," Rice said referring to the joint efforts on demarcation, which she said "would be a very big step forward, actually, for them." Asked if Japan's likely constitutional reform would lead the country to seek nuclear weapons under the new prime minister, Rice, in a transcript of the interview provided by the State Department, said she was unconcerned. "I do not think we're headed in that direction with Japan. I think there are a lot of self-regulating reasons for Japan to remain non-nuclear," she said, stressing that Japan was "very concerned about the North Korean (nuclear) issue and its proliferation activities." One of the reasons the six-party talks "was so important for controlling the nuclear ambitions of North Korea because it has Japan at the table with China, with the United States, with Russia (and South Korea), and I think then forestalls any further nuclearization of the region," she added. Rice said "the Japanese will have to decide" what their new constitution should say, adding that the United States has been strengthening US-Japan defense cooperation "quite dramatically over the last couple of years." (Agencies)

Vocabulary:

fora: forum 的復數 demarcation: 劃分、區分 transcript: 錄音文字 （英語點津陳蓓編輯）