China asks Japan's Abe his stand on shrine visits

BEIJING, Sep 7 (Reuters) Japan's likely next prime minister must clarify his stand on visits to a controversial Tokyo war shrine if he hopes to improve ties with Beijing, Chinese state media said today.

Visits by Japanese leaders to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours wartime criminals alongside 2.5 million war dead, stir bitter memories in China of Japan's 1931-1945 invasion and occupation of large parts of the country.

Shinzo Abe, a conservative cabinet minister, last week announced his candidacy to become Japan's next prime minister, and looks certain to win later this month.

Abe has defended current Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's pilgrimages to the shrine but declined to say whether as prime minister he will visit.

The overseas edition of China's People's Daily -- the ruling Communist Party's chief mouthpiece -- said today that Abe's ''strategy of ambiguity'' was not good enough.

''Perhaps the strategists and advisers at Abe's side see this strategy of ambiguity as a success, but they appear to have forgotten the lesson that sincerity can vanquish a hundred tricks,'' the paper said in a front-page commentary signed by a Japan expert at a state think-tank.

''Abe must ultimately use facts to demonstrate whether he's truly serious about relations with China.'' Abe has advocated bolder Japanese foreign policy, while promising to improve ties with China and South Korea, who have blamed Koizumi's repeated Yasukuni visits for dragging relations to their lowest point in decades.

Japan colonised the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

Last month, China accused Koizumi of ''wrecking the political foundations of China-Japan relations'' when he visited the shrine on the anniversary of Tokyo's World War Two surrender.

Abe paid his respects at Yasukuni in August 2005 and Japanese media have reported that he did so again in April, but he has neither confirmed nor denied the pilgrimage, saying the matter should not be a political or diplomatic issue.

''The history issue is now the major issue hindering the improvement of the Sino-Japanese relationship,'' Liu Jianchao, director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Information Department, said yesterday at the Reuters China Century Summit.

But a commentary in the domestic edition of the People's Daily on Thursday said Japan also needed to moderate its close ties to the United States in order to restore regional relations.

''The asymmetry in Japan-U.S. relations has also weakened Japan's diplomatic independence,'' said the commentary.

''Japanese foreign policy attaches excessive importance to the United States, but not enough to the United Nations and the Northeast Asia region.'' Reuters DKA DB1017