War anniversary statement a big test for Abe

In the last minute of the seminar in Washington on Tuesday, moderator, Victor Cha, an expert on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former director for Asian affairs on the White House's National Security Council, asked the panelists to use one sentence to talk about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's upcoming August statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II.

To me, that was a key question for the panelists to address because Abe's Aug 15 statement will be essential in helping nations in the region put the past behind them and move on.

The three panelists, all US experts on Japan, looked kind of embarrassed, as if it was the toughest question in the 75-minute talk. None of them actually touched on this issue by themselves, and now they all said they expected Abe not to break new ground but repeat what he has already said.