Asia-Europe FMs to meet in Kyoto

Asia-Europe FMs to meet in Kyoto

Shingo Ito, Agence France-Presse/Tokyo

Asian and European foreign ministers will gather in the ancient
Japanese capital of Kyoto this week with European Union (EU)
proposals to lift an arms embargo on China, North Korea's nuclear
ambitions and democracy in Myanmar high on the agenda.

Thirty-eight countries are due to send foreign ministers or
lesser ranking officials from Friday to the two-day Asia-Europe
Meeting (ASEM), set up in 1996 to counter the two regions' ties
with the United States.

Among the figures in Kyoto will be Chinese Foreign Minister Li
Zhaoxing, who is expected to meet his Japanese counterpart and
meeting host, Nobutaka Machimura, amid a sharp deterioration of
ties between the two countries.

A Japanese foreign ministry official said the foreign
ministers are "expected to exchange frank and direct dialogue on
regional issues such as the Korean peninsula, Myanmar and the
Middle East."

For European participants, the meeting will be an opportunity
to deliver a direct message to military-ruled Myanmar, which
joined ASEM last year at a summit of national leaders in Hanoi.

In late April, European Union foreign ministers renewed
sanctions for a year against Myanmar's junta, which restrict
travel by the country's officials and prevent investment in the
country, and called for the freedom of opposition leader Aung San
Suu Kyi.

Myanmar is set to take over the chairmanship next year of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which could cast
a shadow over relations with Europe in a forum such as ASEM.

Neither the United States nor North Korea are in ASEM, whose
meeting comes as North Korea refuses to return to talks on its
nuclear ambitions and says its defiance is due to U.S. hostility.

The forum could provide a chance for the three other Asian
members of the stalled North Korea dialog to talk -- China, Japan
and South Korea.

But Beijing and Seoul have both seen relations slide with
Japan and accuse Tokyo of whitewashing its atrocities during its
occupation of China and Korea through the approval of a
nationalist textbook.

The Japanese and Chinese foreign ministers are expected to
hold talks in Kyoto, following a summit between the countries'
leaders in Jakarta in April that came after major anti-Japanese
demonstrations in China.

China said Li will use ASEM to reiterate Beijing's view that
the European Union should withdraw an arms embargo imposed on it
after the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators.

"We have made our position clear once and again. The arms
embargo remains an unresolved issue of bilateral ties," Chinese
foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said last week.

France has been a prime supporter of ending the ban, but the
move is opposed by the U.S. and Japan, which fear a tilting of
the strategic balance in Asia.

But the Japanese foreign ministry official said the arms
embargo would be "hard to discuss intensively" at ASEM as the
issue does not concern all members of the forum.