16 seconds ago 2009-11-24T18:17:02-08:00
TOKYO (AFP) – US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met Japanese Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii here Tuesday for talks on efforts to revive the ailing global economy.
Geithner arrived in Japan for a two-day stop on his way to a meeting of finance chiefs from member nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum on Thursday in Singapore.
The Treasury chief, on his first visit to Japan since taking the job in January, met Fujii for dinner talks ahead of US President Barack Obama's planned visit to Tokyo from Friday.
"We will discuss the shape of the global economy, but will not talk about individual cases like the Japanese economy," Fujii told reporters last week when asked about his meeting with his US counterpart.
"We basically agree on global economic strategies, and so I would like to have deeper discussions on them," he added.
The talks will follow a weekend G20 meeting in Scotland where financial ministers discussed ways to support a fragile global economic recovery, although a split emerged over a British proposal to tax financial transactions.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's idea would force financial institutions to be more responsible and would use the funds to pay for future bailouts, but Geithner said Washington was not prepared to support it.
Fujii, a 77-year-old former bureaucrat who has railed against wasteful public spending and signalled tolerance for a strong yen, was appointed finance minister in September by the new centre-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.
He skipped the Scotland meeting at the weekend and is also expected to miss the APEC gathering to concentrate on domestic political affairs.
