Japan, China, S. Korea meet briefly

Japan, China, S. Korea meet briefly

George Nishiyama, Reuters/Kuala Lumpur

The leaders of Japan, China and South Korea, caught up in increasingly bitter exchanges over Tokyo's wartime past, had an impromptu chat at a Southeast Asian summit on Monday but officials could not agree how it came about.

A formal meeting of the three leaders held every year on the occasion of the ASEAN summit was not scheduled this year because of tensions over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a Tokyo shrine that honors some convicted war criminals along with Japan's 2.5 million war dead.

The three sides gave diverging accounts of Monday's meeting, with South Korean officials saying their president had talked only to Koizumi, while Chinese officials said both the Chinese and South Korean leaders spoke to him.

"It was a chance encounter," South Korean presidential spokeswoman Mira Sun said, adding, "It was not a meeting."

But Japanese officials said the "friendly" chat lasted for about 10 minutes ahead of a lunch involving members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and their dialog partners Japan, China and South Korea.

Indeed, the three leaders sat together at lunch, with Koizumi seated between Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

Koizumi said no touchy political issues were raised during their chat and the ensuing lunch.

"Premier Wen asked me if I liked Shanghai crab, so I said yes," Koizumi told reporters. "You don't discuss serious things over a meal."

The South Korean spokeswoman said Wen had merely listened to Koizumi and Roh exchange pleasantries about cultural exchanges among the three countries during a chat in a waiting-room.

"While they were chatting the Chinese prime minister entered the room, but in the end the chat only took place between the Japanese and South Korean leaders," the spokeswoman added.

However, speaking to reporters in Kuala Lumpur, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said: "The two leaders urged the Japanese leader to take the right approach toward the issue of history and to create favorable conditions and atmosphere for the trilateral cooperation".

South Korea and China have demanded Koizumi stop his annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine. The Japanese leader has refused, criticizing them for using the issue as a diplomatic card.

Koizumi, who came into power in April 2001, last went to the shrine in October. He says his visits are to pray for peace and honor the war dead.

Apart from the trilateral meeting, both Beijing and Seoul have given him the cold shoulder, saying their leaders would not hold separate talks with him during the Kuala Lumpur gathering.

Wen told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that China had not wanted to see the meeting delayed, and blamed Japan.

"The main reason is because Japanese leaders won't own up to history," he said, repeating oft-made comments.

"The Japanese invasion of China was a very painful disaster... Despite this China and Japan are neighbors. The long term development of relations between the two countries is in the interests of the people of those countries. The main problem is Japanese leaders are going against the tide of history."

Even though Koizumi's shrine visits have frayed relations with China and South Korea, it has done him little harm at home and may even be winning him some points with the Japanese public.

Analysts say his rejection of demands to stop visiting Yasukuni strikes a chord with the many Japanese who resent China's economic rise and are suspicious of its military buildup.