LONDON, April 7. /TASS/. Australia, the UK and the US are considering the possibility of Japan joining the AUKUS alliance, the Financial Times reported.

According to it, Washington, London and Canberra will announce the start of talks on April 8, which the White House hopes will lead to Tokyo's accession to the military alliance. The defense ministers' talks will focus on the second component of the partnership, which involves cooperation in areas such as hypersonic weapons. The first component, involving Australia's procurement of nuclear submarines, is not on the agenda, the newspaper said.

The trilateral statement will be issued ahead of a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington on April 10. The AUKUS statement will allow Biden and Kishida to include a desired reference to Japan's future participation in the alliance in a joint statement to be released after the meeting, the Financial Times said.

At the same time, Kishida said on Friday that no formal decision has been made on how Japan will cooperate with AUKUS in the future, the newspaper pointed out. "To achieve a free and open Indo-Pacific, we would like to continue various efforts to strengthen our co-operation with the US, Australia and the UK, who are important partners in security and defense," the Japanese leader told the Financial Times and several other media outlets.