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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