On Friday, 18 January, Hakubun Shimomura, Japan’s Minister of MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), the funding agency for Japan’s high-energy physics programme, stated Japan’s intention to invite the ILC in the regular press conference after the cabinet meeting, responding to a question from the press about the government’s standpoint to the ILC project.
Shimomura said that the local government officials and economic leaders from Tohoku, one of the two ILC candidate sites in Japan, visited the Minister three times already to make representations for inviting ILC to Japan, and he is expecting the visits of representatives from another candidate site, Kyushu. “However, ILC is such a big project that could not be realised by Japan only. I wish to carry forward to cooperate with countries concerned, and hopefully to invite it to Japan,” he said.
Shimomura said Japanese government would start a preparation to start discussion, including the distribution of the construction cost, with countries concerned in the first half of 2013.
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