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China-Japan row to upstage landmark summit of Asian, African leaders

JAKARTA, Wednesday (AFP) Billion-dollar trade, UN reform and Palestinian self-rule will top the agenda at this weekend's Asia-Africa summit in Jakarta, but a sideline spat between Japan and China is likely to steal the show.

Representatives from 85 countries, including almost 50 heads of state from the two continents, are due to converge on the Indonesian capital for the golden jubilee of a 1955 summit that gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement.

Organisers say the event, ending Sunday with a tree-planting ceremony in Bandung, the city where the first meeting was held, will be a chance to revive strategic ties between Asia and Africa rather than a trip down memory lane.

"This is not simply looking back, nostalgic, there are a number of issues still relevant, that still bring together countries from the Asia-Africa region," said Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa. Among those attending the meeting are Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, China's President Hu Jintao, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, which is jointly hosting the event.

Natalegawa said the summit would result in a "new Asia-Africa strategic partnership", that would revive the original goals of the Bandung meeting and attempt to assert the interests of 73 percent of the world's population.

But with serious rifts between many participants, the event is unlikely to share the idealism of 50 years ago when Indonesia's founding president Sukarno and leaders including India's Jawaharlal Nehru and and China's Zhao Enlai aimed to forge a counterbalance to the bipolar world of the Cold War.

Anger between China and Japan, with tens of thousands taking to the streets in Chinese cities to protest Tokyo's approval of a nationalist textbook that downplays Japan's wartime atrocities, is likely to overshadow the summit.

Annan has expressed hope that both countries will use the meeting as an opportunity to end the dispute that Beijing says has plunged its relations with Japan to a 30-year low. "If they meet at the summit in Indonesia, it would also be helpful and I would encourage them to do that," he said.

Japan has repeatedly stressed its desire for Koizumi to meet Hu, but there has been no response from China. Analysts say in-depth talks are unlikely. UN reform is expected to be high on the agenda at this weekend's summit, with Annan scheduled to brief delegates on proposed sweeping changes, including the enlargement of the Security Council to 24 members from the current 15.

One of many sideshows at the summit will be a rare foreign appearance by Myanmar's leader Senior General Than Shwe amid international opposition to his country's scheduled chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2006.


 

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