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China’s deputy PM Wu Yi cancels meeting with Japan’s PM Koizumi
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China’s deputy PM Wu Yi cancels meeting with Japan’s PM Koizumi
Chinese vice-premier Wu Yi cancelled a meeting with Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi scheduled yesterday and cut short her trip to Japan due to a “sudden internal commitment”, Japanese officials said.
Koizumi said he did not know why Wu was returning to China a day early, and officials in Beijing had no immediate comment. “It would have been a good opportunity since the meeting was proposed by them,” Koizumi told reporters.
“I would meet them anytime if they want to meet,” he said. “If they don’t want to meet, there is no need to.” Japanese Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Akira Chiba told Reuters that Chinese officials said Wu had a sudden internal commitment and would leave Japan yesterday afternoon.
“The Chinese side made it very specific that it has nothing to do with Yasukuni,” he added, referring to Koizumi’s annual visits to a Tokyo shrine for the war dead that is seen by Beijing as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism. An official of Koizumi’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) played down the significance of the cancellation but also warned that some Japanese may regard it as an affront. “It was basically a courtesy call, the two of them aren’t exactly counterparts. So I don’t think it’s that big a problem,” senior LDP official Shinzo Abe told reporters.
Simmering disputes</B>
“If it is due to urgent business it can’t be helped, but many people in Japan may feel it is rude,” Kyodo news agency quoted Abe as saying. In a speech in Tokyo on Monday morning, Wu made no mention of the cancelled meeting with Koizumi but emphasised the need for Japan and China to
improve relations. “Currently the relationship between the two countries is not satisfactory or benign,” she said through an interpreter. “The maintenance of such a situation will not serve the interests of the two countries. We must change the trend as quickly as possible,” Wu said.
“China is praying for friendship between the two countries,” she said, adding that the two countries must use history as a mirror and adopt a forward-looking spirit. During a question-and-answer session, Wu said China and Japan were facing difficulties that they had never experienced before in the over 30 years since they normalised relations, and that their problems should be resolved via dialogue. “Through mutual dialogue we have to ... properly deal with differences of views between our two countries,” she said.
Sino-Japanese ties have been troubled by a series of feuds including anger in China at Koizumi’s annual pilgrimage to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are honoured along with Japan’s 2.5 million war dead.
Koizumi and Chinese President Hu Jintao pulled ties back from the brink last month after a rare public apology by Koizumi for suffering caused by Japan’s past military aggression. But tensions persist, putting at risk the growing economic ties between the two countries that generated nearly $170 billion worth of trade in 2004.
Wu has been in Japan for a week-long visit and was set to meet Koizumi later yesterday as both sides seek to improve relations. She was to have returned to China today.
Anti-Japan protests erupted in cities across China last month, triggered by Tokyo’s approval of school textbooks that critics say whitewash its 1931-45 invasion and partial occupation of China and by its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
<B>Junior coalition</B>
Chinese President Hu Jintao criticised Japan’s handling of its war history and its policy toward Taiwan on Sunday, warning that Sino-Japanese ties could be damaged “in an instant”, Japanese media reported.
Hu made the remarks at a meeting in Beijing with Tsutomu Takebe, secretary general of the LDP, and Takebe’s counterpart in the LDP’s junior coalition partner, Kyodo and other Japanese media reported.
<B>Masayuki KITANO</B>
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