Japan 'still wants apology from China'

TOKYO, Monday (Reuters) - Japan still wants an apology from China for the sometimes-violent anti-Japan protests that have taken place across China over the past three weeks, Japan's chief government spokesman said on Monday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said it was "very regrettable" that China did not apologise at a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura in Beijing on Sunday.

Anti-Japan violence should not be condoned under any circumstances, Hosoda said. "There is no change in our basic policy" of seeking an apology, he said.

Meanwhile three out of every four Japanese voters believe Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has not done enough to improve long-strained relations with China and South Korea, according to a newspaper poll published on Monday.

The survey, appearing after another weekend of sometimes-violent anti-Japan demonstrations in China, comes as relations between China and Japan are at their worst in decades over what many in China see as Japan's efforts to gloss over its wartime history.

Seventy-six percent of respondents to a poll of about 1,000 voters the Mainichi Shimbun on Saturday and Sunday said Koizumi had not done enough to mend ties with Japan's neighbours, both of which were occupied by Japan before and during World War Two.

The poll showed that 34 percent of respondents also believed domestic conditions in China were behind the anti-Japan demonstrations.