Abe, S.Korea's Roh agree to meet soon: Japan

Tokyo, Sept 28: New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun agreed today to meet at an early date, a Japanese government spokesman said.

The agreement came in a 15-minute telephone conversation between the two leaders, Hiroshige Seko, Abe's special adviser in charge of public relations, told a news conference.

''I would like to thoroughly talk with the president about developing relations between Japan and South Korea in Northeast Asia and the world,'' Abe told Roh, according to Seko. ''I hope to meet you at an early date.'' ''I quite agree,'' Seko quoted Roh as telling Abe.

South Korea had been shunning summits with Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who stepped down this week, over his pilgrimages to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, seen by Seoul as well as Beijing as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

Seoul's wording of the agreement suggested Roh might be in less of a hurry than Abe to meet.

''The leaders of the two countries would meet at an appropriate time and exchange views on promoting South Korea-Japan ties, and related matters would be discussed through diplomatic channels,'' South Korea's presidential Blue House said in a statement.

''Roh stressed that confidence and respect between South Korea and Japan are of the utmost importance to the stable development of the two countries' ties, and said he anticipated ties would develop and regional peace and cooperation would strengthen on the occasion of Prime Minister Abe's inauguration,'' it said.

South Korea and China had objected strongly to Koizumi's annual visits to Yasukuni, which honours Japanese wartime leaders convicted as war criminals along with war dead.

Visits by Japanese leaders to the shrine stir bitter memories in China of Japan's 1931-1945 invasion and occupation of large parts of the country, while resentment still lingers in South Korea over Japan's often-brutal domination of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

Abe has backed Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni, but he has declined to say whether he would visit the shrine as Prime Minister.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said on Wednesday that Tokyo wants to hold a leaders' meeting with China in October, and a visit to Beijing by Abe was one option.

Speculation has grown that Abe might meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao after taking office, perhaps on the sidelines of a November Asian Pacific leaders' gathering in Hanoi.

REUTERS