Japan's Fukuda to visit China next week: official
TOKYO (AFP) — Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will pay his maiden visit in office to China next week, his government announced Friday, in a bid to keep ironing out strains between Asia's two largest economies.
Fukuda will spend four days in China from December 27 and meet with President Hu Jintao, pending permission from Japan's parliament which is generally a formality, chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said.
"I expect that the summit will achieve meaningful results and further cement the mutually beneficial strategic partnership" between the countries, Machimura told a news conference.
China refused high-level contact with Japan during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi, citing his annual visits to a shrine venerating Japanese war dead including war criminals.
Fukuda's trip will be the first by a Japanese leader to China since October last year, when then premier Shinzo Abe headed to Beijing days after taking over from Koizumi and launched a reconciliation drive.
Unlike both Koizumi and Abe, Fukuda has long been known for his conciliatory approach to China and his opposition to the controversial Yasukuni shrine.
But Japan and China, two of the world's largest energy importers, still have a host of disagreements including over drilling rights in the energy-rich East China Sea.
The two countries have failed at their goal of resolving the gas row in time for Fukuda's visit. Machimura said the spat will come up in Fukuda's talks in China.
"I hear that negotiations are still taking place, but I wonder if we can hear good news on that within a week" before Fukuda's visit, Machimura said.
Fukuda and Chinese leaders will also discuss North Korea's nuclear drive and the fight against global warming among other issues, Machimura said.
Eleven rounds of negotiations on the gas fields in the East China Sea have failed to make headway, with China rejecting the maritime border which Japan considers a starting point of negotiations.
However, Chinese Ambassador to Japan Cui Tiankai voiced hope Thursday for a resolution soon in a spat over gas fields, saying the dispute should not set back warming relations between the two countries.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, on a rare visit to Tokyo in April, set a goal with Abe of resolving the issue by late this year.
"The current situation is very disappointing in the sense that we could not meet the deadline of autumn this year," Machimura said, adding that "efforts to reach a solution will certainly continue."
Fukuda held his first meeting as premier with Chinese leaders last month when he met with Wen on the sidelines of a regional summit in Singapore.
It will be Fukuda's third foreign trip since he took over in September from Abe, who quit after an election defeat and a series of domestic scandals.
Fukuda paid his first visit to Washington, where he promised US President George W. Bush to work to resume a naval mission supporting US-led operations in Afghanistan which was suspended in November because of objections by Japan's main opposition party.
Fukuda has called for Japan to be humble about its history, distancing himself from more hawkish members of his party. His father, the late premier Takeo Fukuda, signed a landmark peace-and-friendship treaty with China in 1978.
