Japan, China, S.Korea summit may be scrapped-daily

By Masayuki Kitano

TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japan-China-South Korea summit may be
canceled for the first time in six years due to Chinese and
Korean anger over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s
visits to a war shrine, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

Japan’s ties with China and South Korea have been chilled
by Koizumi’s annual pilgrimages to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine,
which they regard as a symbol of past Japanese militarism.

Koizumi, who says he makes the visits to pray for peace and
honor the war dead, last went in October, triggering protests
from the two Asian neighbours.

Due to such Chinese and South Korean anger, a summit
between the three countries that had been expected to take
place on the sidelines of an ASEAN-plus-three summit in
Malaysia in December would likely be put off, the Nihon Keizai
Shimbun said.

Japan, China and South Korea have held a three-way summit
every year since 1999.

“There haven’t been any demonstrations but it will probably
be difficult for Chinese leaders to smile and shake hands with
Prime Minister Koizumi in the current situation,” the Nihon
Keizai quoted a Japanese government source as saying.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Japan was still
trying to arrange the three-way summit and a Chinese official
was quoted as saying that such a meeting remained a
possibility.

But comments by Chinese and South Korean officials
underscored the chilly state of Japan’s relations with the two
Asian neighbours, and U.S. ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer
said he hoped China and Japan would mend their differences.

“I think the United States hopes that Japan and China work
out their differences. It’s important to the whole region that
people get along out here,” Schieffer told reporters.

FRAYED TIES

At the moment Sino-Japanese relations are still rocky.

“China-Japan relations are currently facing difficulties,”
Kyodo news agency quoted Cui Tiankai, who heads the Chinese
Foreign Ministry’s Asian Affairs Department, as saying.

“Under these circumstances, it is impossible to expect
everything to be business as usual, as if nothing has
happened,” Kyodo quoted Cui as saying in Beijing.

Cui added, however, that a trilateral summit between China,
Japan and South Korea was still up for discussion, Kyodo said.

In Seoul, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said
there were no plans now for President Roh Moo-hyun and Koizumi
to hold a bilateral meeting at the ASEAN summit.

“Currently, we have not considered the plan for President
Roh Moo-hyun to meet with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi,”
Ban told a news conference.

But Ban said he may have a chance for talks with Japanese
Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who recently criticised China and
South Korea for protesting against Koizumi’s shrine visits.

“But as far as Foreign Minister Aso is concerned, when he
attends the conference (ASEAN+3) there may be an opportunity to
casually exchange views on (Japan’s) views on history.”

South Korea said on Monday that Aso had “misguided views”
on the troubled history between Japan and South Korea, after
the Nihon Keizai quoted Aso as saying on Saturday that China
and South Korea were “the only countries in the world that talk
about Yasukuni.”

Japan’s ties with China and South Korea have often been
bedevilled by disputes stemming from Japanese aggression in
Asia in the first half of the 20th century.

“I believe in friendship with China and South Korea,”
Koizumi told members of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party in
a speech on Wednesday.

“I don’t understand why I am criticised,” he added on the
topic of his visits to Yasukuni. “Every country prays for peace
and mourns its war dead.”

Japan invaded and occupied parts of China from 1931 to 1945
and colonised the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul)