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China, Japan to move forward after disputes
KYOTO, Japan - The foreign ministers of Japan and China were due to meet to see how they can move forward amid a series of bitter disputes that have sent bilateral relations plummeting.
The two foreign ministers are among top diplomats from 38 Asian and European countries who are meeting in the Japanese city of Kyoto. Friction has been steadily increasing in recent months between East Asia's two leading powers. Japan's bid to play a greater global role has met growing Chinese demands that Tokyo must do more to atone for its wartime aggression. Japan's approval last month of a nationalist textbook that downplays some of the worst atrocities set off mass protests in China, with crowds vandalizing Japanese diplomatic and business interests. China has refused to apologize for the unrest but has indicated that Saturday's meeting was an opportunity to move forward. "We want to talk about how to develop stable relations between China and Japan," said Ma Jisheng, councilor in charge of the political section at the Chinese embassy in Tokyo. "We want to talk about the broad issues," he said. But Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima, when asked if Japan was still seeking an apology, said: "It's still pending." The Japanese and Chinese foreign ministers are due to meet both bilaterally and in a three-way meet with their counterpart Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea, another nation outraged by Japan's alleged whitewashing of its bloody past. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Chinese President Hu Jintao met on April 23 on the sidelines of an Asia-Africa conference in Jakarta, where the Japanese leader renewed an apology for Japan's 20th-century militarism. The two leaders agreed to salvage friendly ties but Hu pushed Koizumi to take concrete action such as ending his annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine, a Shinto sanctuary in Tokyo that venerates 2.5 million Japanese war dead including seven men hanged for war crimes. Japan has been struggling to overcome perceptions in Asia that it has not atoned for its wartime past as it lobbies to win a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, whose composition dates from World War II. A Japanese diplomat said the 38-nation Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) on Friday reached a consensus on the need for UN reforms despite China's stated opposition to Japan winning a prestigious permanent seat. The second and final day of the meeting began with a discussion of human rights in Myanmar, whose foreign minister, Nyan Win, on Friday was handed a list by the European Union of prisoners it wants the military junta to free. Some 100 protesters rallied Saturday outside the meeting venue with pictures of the most famous person on the detainees' list -- opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The European Union and the United States, which is not part of the meeting in Kyoto, have warned the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that relations could be put in jeopardy if Myanmar assumes presidency of the 10-member bloc next year. |
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