Japan’s new PM to visit China soon

JAPAN: Japan’s new Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda agreed Friday in telephone talks with his counterpart Wen Jiabao to visit China soon as Asia’s two largest economies keep mending ties, officials said.

Fukuda, a political veteran known for his conciliatory views towards China, on Tuesday succeeded Shinzo Abe, a conservative who nonetheless worked to repair ties with Beijing.

In a telephone conversation, Fukuda and Wen agreed to work closely over North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and on the Myanmar crisis, Japan’s chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said.

Fukuda told Wen “that he would like to visit China as soon as possible as it is important to build confidence between the leaders,” Machimura told a news conference.

Wen agreed to arrange a visit “an the earliest possible date,” Machimura said.

Wen paid a rare visit to Japan in April and Japanese newspapers Friday said the two countries were arranging for President Hu Jintao to visit early next year. Relations between Japan and China hit rock bottom under former Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi, who visited a controversial war shrine each year during his 2001-2006 tenure.

The Yasukuni shrine venerates 2.5 million war dead including top war criminals from World War II and is seen by many Chinese and Koreans as a symbol of Japan’s past aggression against them.

Abe, a strong supporter of the shrine, kept a strategic silence on whether he would go to the shrine and was able to visit Beijing and Seoul days after taking over last year to patch up relations.

Fukuda, unlike Abe, is known to be against visits to the shrine in principle. Fukuda is the son of late premier Takeo Fukuda, who signed a landmark peace-and-friendship treaty with China in 1978.

Tokyo, Friday, AFP