Gillard visits tsunami-ravaged Japanese town

Sendai (Japan), Apr. 23 (ANI): Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has arrived in Japan"s tsunami-ravaged Sendai to view the devastation.

Gillard touched down at about 9.30am (local time) and is travelling by bus to the devastated community of Minami Sanriku, the Herald Sun reports.he town, once a quaint fishing town, was almost completely flattened by the March 11 tsunami. Up to 10,000 people were killed there.

According to the Daily Telegraph, she will visit an evacuation centre to talk with locals who lost homes and loved ones.he will be accompanied by Rob McNeil, the leader of the Australian search and rescue team that helped Japanese authorities search for survivors in the Minami Sanriku wreckage.

She will then fly to Seoul for the next leg of her North Asian journey.

Gillard has already attracted controversy by announcing a move to strengthen defence ties with Japan and South Korea.

The move is being seen in China as an attempt to create a new US-anchored security alliance on its borders.

Gillard and her Japanese counter Naoto Kan have instructed their governments to "take forward ... a vision for bilateral security and defence co-operation", pledging to complete an intelligence-sharing agreement before the next foreign and defence ministerial consultations.

Gillard will also seek to entrench regular defence talks with South Korea, probably based on the Japanese model, when she meets the Prime Minister, Lee Myung-bak, in Seoul on Monday.

From Seoul, Gillard will fly to China, whose booming economy has insulated Australia from the global financial crisis and now accounts for more than a quarter of Australian exports.

"Yes, of course China is nervous. We are afraid such bilateral arrangements will expand into a multilateral alliance system," said Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Peking University.

China"s display of a more aggressive foreign policy and military posture, especially last year, has prompted neighbours to respond with new US-anchored security networks and to strengthen existing ones. (ANI)