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.