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China, Japan smooth way for Wen's spring visit
2007-02-15
Japan and China began smoothing the way for a red carpet visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during talks in Tokyo that began on Thursday, but regional rivalry and friction over their wartime past lurked in the background. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing's visit to Tokyo comes four months after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended a fence-mending summit in Beijing and days after envoys from the two countries helped thrash out a deal aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. "Chinese-Japanese relations have been at a new level since last autumn, but we would like to take relations to an even higher level," a Japanese lower house official quoted Li as saying in a meeting with the Speaker of the House, Yohei Kono. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki echoed the positive tone. Wen's visit, expected in April, would be the first by a top Chinese leader since then-premier Zhu Rongji in October 2000. Sino-Japanese ties grew frosty under Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who made pilgrimages to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine -- seen by Beijing as a symbol of Japan's past militarism because World War Two leaders convicted as war criminals are honored there along with millions of war dead. Once known for talking tough toward China, Abe has striven since taking office in September to improve ties, partly by declining to say if he would visit Yasukuni. He visited the shrine before taking the nation's top job. FRICTION LURKS With domestic support sliding due to doubts about his leadership, Abe could use a diplomatic success before local elections in April and an upper house poll in July. Still, sources of friction abound. In a nod to one source of mistrust, Li reassured Japan of China's commitment to the peaceful use of space, the Japanese lower house official said after the meeting with Kono. Japan has expressed concern over China's satellite-killing missile test last month and has long been wary of its rival's growing military strength. Beijing, for its part, looks askance at Japanese moves to revise its pacifist constitution. In talks with Kono and Abe's junior coalition partner, New Komeito Party leader Akihiro Ota, Li also touched on a quarrel over sea boundaries that flared up this month after Japan spotted a Chinese research ship in disputed waters in the East China Sea. The two energy-hungry countries are at odds over oil and gas fields in the area, a topic that may come up during Li's visit. Li also offered China's support for Japan's efforts to resolve a feud with North Korea over Japanese citizens kidnapped decades ago to help train spies in language and culture. Japan has signed on to a six-party deal under which North Korea will shut its Yongbyon nuclear plant in return for energy aid, but insists Tokyo will not provide financial help until the feud over the abductees is resolved. Despite the diplomatic thaw, history will likely haunt ties. This year marks the 70th anniversary of Japanese soldiers' 1937 slaughter of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war in Nanjing. China has put the Nanjing death toll at 300,000. An Allied tribunal after World War Two estimated that around 142,000 were killed and some Japanese conservatives deny there was any massacre at all. Li was to meet Abe and Foreign Minister Taro Aso on Friday. (Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing and George Nishiyama in Tokyo)
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