Japan says Abe to visit China, S Korea Oct 8-9

TOKYO, Oct 4 (Reuters) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit China on October 8 and South Korea the next day for summits to repair ties frayed by feuds over their wartime past, but North Korea's nuclear threat will grab a top spot on the agenda.

The talks between Abe -- who took office last week -- and the leaders of the two countries will come just days after their unpredictable neighbour North Korea announced that it would conduct its first nuclear test, boosting tensions in the region.

Abe will meet Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing on Sunday and then fly to Seoul for talks with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Monday, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hakubun Shimomura told a news conference.

China confirmed Abe's visit. ''China and Japan have reached consensus on overcoming political obstacles affecting bilateral relations and on encouraging the healthy development of friendly, cooperative relations,'' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said on the ministry's Web site (www.fmprc.gov.cn).

The two countries had shunned two-way talks with Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, because of his visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past militarism because it honours convicted Japanese war criminals along with the nation's war dead.

The three countries are eager to repair ties, not least to prevent diplomatic tensions from hurting economic relations.

Japan's trade with China including Hong Kong surpassed that with the United States in 2004 and was around 25 trillion yen (1.9 billion) last year.

South Korea is Japan's third-biggest trading partner.

Smoothing the dispute over history had been expected to top the agenda at the summits, but North Korea's statement yesterday that it would conduct a nuclear test gives the leaders another urgent topic to discuss. The threat comes just months after Pyongyang test-fired a barrage of missiles in July.

''We anticipate that the upcoming South Korea-Japan summit will contribute to building a relationship of trust between the two leaders and improving ties between the two countries,'' South Korean presidential spokesman Yoon Tae-young said in a statement.

Roh and Abe will also discuss stepped-up efforts to restart stalled six-country talks on ending the North's nuclear weapons programme, the presidential Blue House said in a statement.

NORTH KOREA THREAT Pyongyang's move ''makes things very easy for Abe. It is easy to create an agenda,'' said Noriyuki Suzuki, chief analyst at Tokyo-based Radiopress agency, which monitors North Korean media.

The three countries may not agree easily on how to respond, however. The two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia have been involved in long-standing talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme, but North Korea walked out of the talks a year ago and refuses to return until Washington ends a squeeze on its offshore bank accounts.

China and Japan have not held a summit since April last year, and there have been no visits to Beijing by a Japanese prime minister since October 2001. The South Korean and Japanese leaders have not met formally since last November.

Abe, who became prime minister last week, has supported Koizumi's visits to the shrine and paid his respects there himself in the past. But he has declined to say if he would go there while in office.

With Abe apparently unwilling to promise publicly not go to Yasukuni while in office, the two sides have been seeking other ways out of the deadlock over their wartime past.

This week, Abe quoted from a historic 1995 Japanese government statement in which then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama apologised for suffering Japan caused in Asia with its military aggression in the 1930s and 1940s.

''In the past, our country, through colonisation and aggression, caused great damage and suffering to the peoples of many countries, especially in Asia,'' Abe told parliament yesterday, repeating a phrase included in the Murayama statement.

REUTERS PDM RAI1051