US President Barack Obama and Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe said Tuesday that they were not opposed to China's Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, but stressed it needs high standards and transparency.

"Asia needs infrastructure.... To the extent that China wants to put capital into development projects around the region, that's a positive," Obama said in a joint press conference with Abe.

"What is involved is exactly what Prime Minister Abe said, which is if we're going to have a multilateral lending institution, then you have to have some guidelines by which it's going to operate."