While small in size, the 12 nations of the Pacific all cast votes at the UN and international meetings, making them increasingly important in achieving Japan's goal of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

"The region has 12 votes in the United Nations. It is important for Japan's diplomacy," said a Japanese foreign ministry official.

Leaders of 12 Pacific states -- Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu -- will meet Friday and Saturday in Nago on Japan's southern island of Okinawa.

They will be joined by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the foreign minister of New Zealand and the leaders of Niue and Cook Islands, which govern themselves in free association with Wellington.

The summit comes less than two months after Wen Jiabao became the first Chinese premier to visit the Pacific Islands with a stop in Fiji, leading to talk of a new Asian power rivalry in the often overlooked region.

"The whole balance of power is going to swing to Asia," said University of the South Pacific Emeritus professor Ron Crocombe, who lives in the Cook Islands.

China, the only Asian nation with veto power on the Security Council, has become a diplomatic thorn in Japan's side. China has campaigned against Japan's bid for a UN seat, accusing it of failing to atone for war-time aggression.

Koizumi also took his bid for Japanese influence to Africa a month ago, paying the first visits by a sitting Japanese premier to Ethiopia and Ghana.

The Okinawa summit is the fourth of its kind. Japan launched the initiative in October 1997 to help the developing nations achieve economic independence and improve environmental and political security.

Japan is expected to declare at the latest summit aid worth 40 billion yen (357 million dollars) for the next three years, a boost from the 30 billion yen for the region in the last three years, press reports said.

China, a longtime Japanese aid recipient, has started giving out aid to the Pacific Islands, promising three billion yuan (42 billion yen, 374 million dollars) over three years in a Pacific initiative announced in April.

But Hidenori Ijiri, a professor of international relations at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, said Japan's efforts to collect votes for UN reform were likely to end in vain.

"China wants to block Japan from standing on the same level (in the UN) no matter what," he said. "If China refuses, Japan can't do much to change that."

Crocombe, the professor in the Cook Islands, said that Japan and China were also looking to the Pacific for its natural resources, particularly fisheries.

Environmentalists have accused Japan of using financial aid to Pacific nations to sway votes at the International Whaling Commission, which next meets in June, in hopes of ending a global moratorium on commercial whaling.

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