China said after Tuesday's meeting between the two countries' foreign ministers in Doha -- their first in over a year -- that the shrine visits by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi constituted a key obstacle to improving ties.

Japan's Taro Aso and China's Li Zhaoxing "agreed that we should accelerate the negotiations between Japan and China on the possibility of joint exploitation" of natural gas in the East China Sea, where the disputed fields are located, Aso's press secretary, Yoshinori Katori, told reporters.

Katori said the ministers, who met on the sidelines of an Asian forum in the Qatari capital, also agreed to consider setting up a "consultation and notification mechanism in order to avoid unexpected emergencies in the East China Sea."

Katori said Tokyo wanted to resume meetings on the reserves, which failed to make a breakthrough during a previous round earlier this month, "as soon as possible."

The meeting between the two foreign ministers was seen in Japan as the latest signal by China that it wants to improve ties after Koizumi steps down as prime minister later this year.

Katori said that Aso "stated that he would make an appropriate decision based on his personal conviction and his official position as a minister" on visits to the shrine.

Every time Koizumi visits the shrine, "he explains that he is not going for the sake of the Class-A war criminals, but for all other Japanese victims who lost their lives," Katori said.

The Yasukuni shrine honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead including 14 top or Class-A war criminals.

Aso "did not visit the shrine after he became foreign minister" last October, Katori said.

Katori said the meeting had taken place in a "very friendly" atmosphere.

The two men appeared to chat and joke with each other before their 90-minute closed-door talks.

No date was set for a new encounter, but "we hope to continue this kind of high-level meeting," Katori said.

"It's necessary to recognize, and sometimes to respect, the difference in each other's way of thinking in order for the two countries to build a mature relationship," Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, a frontrunner to succeed Koizumi in September, said in Tokyo.

China and Japan "should strengthen the strategic dialogue between them and work together to remove the political obstacle to their relations," Wang Donghua, a spokesman for the Chinese delegation in Doha, told reporters.

But he said Li told Aso that "the repeated visits by the Japanese leader to the Yasukuni shrine, which commemorates Class-A criminals of World War II, seriously offend the sentiments of the Chinese people and violate the political foundation of bilateral relations."

It is "imperative to remove such an obstacle to improving and developing bilateral ties," Li said, as quoted by China's official Xinhua agency.

Li last met Aso's predecessor, Nobutaka Machimura, on the sidelines of a gathering of foreign ministers from Asia and Europe in Kyoto in early May last year.

China called off all top-level dialogue with Japan after Koizumi made his fifth visit in office to the Yasukuni shrine in October, but dialogue has been gradually expanding between Asia's largest economies.

The Doha meeting showed "China is trying to send a message to the Japanese public that they will only have genuine talks with the next prime minister, not Koizumi," said Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of international politics at Japan's Waseda University.

Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party will hold an internal vote in September on Koizumi's successor.

burs/lg/kir

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
China News from SinoDaily.com

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News