There is confusion over Donald Trump’s first talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Even the day for the first meeting of Donald Trump with Shinzo Abe is getting near, there are no final details yet for the said talks.
Abe is the first foreign leader who will meet Trump in person since he was elected as president of the United States.
On Thursday night, Japanese officials said they had not finalized when or where in New York it would take place, who would be invited, or in some cases whom to call for answers.
This only shows that there are difficulties in turning Trump from a freewheeling businessman into a sitting president with a watertight schedule.
On Wednesday, Japanese and US officials said that the State Department had not been involved in planning the meeting.
“There has been a lot of confusion,” said one Japanese official.
The supposedly meeting was only agreed to last week after the business mogul won the elections. However, Trump and his advisers have been busy in meetings at his headquarters in Manhattan’s Trump Tower in recent days to work out who gets which job in the new administration.
Earlier reports quoted advisers saying that Trump is expected to use the Abe meeting to reassure Japan and other Asian allies rattled by his campaign rhetoric.
However, Trump as a brash outsider with no diplomatic or government experience, and Abe who is a veteran lawmaker, have differences on policy issues such as free trade.
The aides of the president-elect did not immediately answer requests on Wednesday to release any comment about the Abe visit or contact between the transition team and the State Department.
During the APEC summit in Peru, it is unusual for foreign leaders to hold high-level diplomatic talks in the United States without detailed planning.
However there are world leaders that sometimes hold loosely planned bilateral meetings at regional summits.
As of now, Abe is on his way to an Asia-Pacific summit.
