KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark will visit Japan and Korea in the next month with free trade on her mind in the wake of the ground-breaking agreement just signed with China.
Progress with South Korea is likely because both countries commissioned a joint study that backs a free trade
agreement, but protectionist Japan is a much harder sell.
Helen Clark told the Herald last week that she raised the matter with then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on her last visit to Japan in June 2005.
"I said to him that it was a matter of concern to us that our relationship with Japan seemed a bit static and that we had developed a dynamic and forward-looking agenda with China - as could be seen with the FTA negotiations - and we would like to have a more dynamic and forward-looking agenda with Japan."
She said the FTA talks with China had added dynamism and until New Zealand could make progress on such issues with Japan, the relationship with Japan wouldn't be as dynamic.
"So really I am going with the same message again."
Helen Clark acknowledged that New Zealand's relationship with Japan was older than it was with China and that it was important not to take the relationship for granted.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was accused by Opposition leader Brendan Nelson last month of neglecting Japan when he left it off his first major overseas trip as PM.
Japan has had two changes of leader since Helen Clark was there last: Shinzo Abe took over from Mr Koizumi but resigned shortly after the Apec summit in Australia last year and was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda.
Helen Clark met Mr Fukuda when he visited New Zealand in 2006 for a parliamentary conference and last year at the East Asia summit, after he became Prime Minister.
She said Korea's significance as a trading partner - it is our seventh largest - was often overlooked.
She will be visiting both countries in the week before the Budget on May 22.
Helen Clark said that her most recent trip overseas, culminating in the FTA with China, was the most significant undertaken since she became Prime Minister: "There is nothing comparable."
As well signing the FTA, it took in two summits: the Nato summit in Romania to which New Zealand was invited because of its involvement in the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF); and the Progressive Governance summit in England of leaders of social democratic countries.
Helen Clark said she had pressed for New Zealand and other non-Nato countries in Afghanistan to be included in the Nato summit and to contribute to its strategy there.
"I made the point that the New Zealand Government place enormous emphasis on reconciliation as part of the overall strategy."
She said it was now accepted that the Nato strategy in Afghanistan had to include development and governance as well as military involvement.
"It is my own view that while this may well bring into the political process people whose views we might find anathema, on the other hand it is better to have people inside a political process than involved in a war."