Tokyo

THE leader of the main political opposition party in Japan has charged that the United States and Japan have committed a major "diplomatic blunder" by sitting out the chance to become founder members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Tetsuya Okada of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) said on Monday that the confusion over how to respond to the launch of the China-led AIIB was "symptomatic of the declining power of the US"; in Japan, it was the result of prime minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet leaving the matter to two competing ministries, rather than involving itself directly in it.