President Barack Obama pledged to pursue pragmatic cooperation with China, engage more deeply in Asia and push for deeper trade ties with the region in a major speech in the Japanese capital on Saturday. Tokyo is the first stop in Obama"s nine-day Asian tour, which also takes him to Singapore for an Asia-Pacific summit, to China for talks likely to feature climate change and trade gaps, and to South Korea, where the North"s nuclear ambitions will be in focus. Obama, on his first trip to Asia since becoming leader, reaffirmed Washington"s decades-old alliance with Japan, Reuters reported. "But while our commitment to this region begins in Japan, it does not end here," Obama told an audience of about 1,500 people. "So I want every American to know that we have a stake in the future of this region. This is where we engage in much of our commerce and buy many of our goods. "And this is where we can export more of our own products and create jobs back home in the process," said the Hawaii-born Obama, dubbing himself America"s first "Pacific President".
