Japan PM's N Asian summits set scene for thaw

Tokyo, Oct 6: When Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, clasps the hands of Chinese and South Korean leaders before the cameras at ice-breaking summits on Sunday and Monday, much of his mission will be accomplished.

Abe will be making a start -- welcome in the region and in Washington -- on repairing bilateral ties frayed by predecessor Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which is seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

''It is the start of restoring relations,'' said Tomoyuki Kojima, a China expert at Keio University in Tokyo.

''Just to meet is important, and now that is possible.'' Abe, a conservative who took office last week, meets Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders in Beijing on Sunday, and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in Seoul the next day.

Ironically, perhaps, this week's threat by unpredictable North Korea to conduct a nuclear test could ease tensions at the summits by distracting from deep-seated disputes over history.

''Both China and Japan must be happy that the North Korea issue has come up,'' Kojima said. ''They can spend time on that.'' No one expects the summits to erase bitter memories of Japan's wartime aggression and colonisation, erase mutual mistrust, or resolve feuds over territory and energy rights.

''Abe's visit will be an opportunity for a limited easing of tensions in China-Japan relations -- I say limited because there are so many problems,'' said Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at the People's University of China in Beijing.

Indeed, with Abe still declining to say whether he will visit Yasukuni while in office, Shi and others cautioned that the reach for rapprochement could later backfire in Beijing and Seoul.

But for Abe to win agreement from China and South Korea to meet is already something of a diplomatic coup.

''If he has the opportunity to smooth the wrinkles that Koizumi has created and begin to build bridges, he clearly has a diplomatic feather in his cap,'' said Brad Glosserman, executive director of Hawaii-based think-tank Pacific Forum CSIS.

Koizumi was unable to travel to Beijing for a two-way summit after a visit there in October 2001 and did not meet South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun for full-scale talks after June 2005.

Economic Links

Abe has faced pressure from Japanese business executives worried about economic fallout from chilly diplomatic ties. China and South Korea are also keen for smoother relations in part because of vital trade and investment links. In an apparent sign of how eager Beijing is for a thaw, its leaders will be meeting Abe at the start of a key meeting of Chinese Communist Party senior officials.

Abe, a conservative who wants to restore Japan's sense of pride in its past, has been laying the groundwork for the summits with softer public statements on history.

He told a parliamentary panel yesterday that wartime leaders, including his cabinet minister grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, had ''great responsibility'' for starting the war.

Kishi was imprisoned as a war criminal but was never tried and went on to serve as prime minister from 1957 to 1960.

''As a result of starting war, many Japanese lost their lives and families and we left many scars on the people of Asia,'' said Abe, at 52, Japan's first premier born after World War Two.

''Particularly, those people in the position of leader at the time, including my grandfather, had great responsibility.'' Abe also referred in parliament this week to a historic 1995 statement by then-prime minister Tomiichi Murayama apologising for the suffering Japan caused in Asia during the war.

And in a nod to an issue highly emotive in South Korea, Abe said he accepted as valid a 1993 Japanese government statement admitting the Imperial Japanese Army forced thousands of mostly Asian women, many of them Korean, to provide sex for soldiers.

Worries about North Korea could provide an oddly welcome distraction from rancour over history at the summits, but the three leaders are unlikely to agree totally on how to respond.

Japan and its close ally, the United States, incline toward a hard line against Pyongyang, including tightening of sanctions, while South Korea and China prefer negotiation and incentives.

''They will agree that North Korea should not test, that all problems should be solved peacefully, and call for a return to the six-party talks,'' Glosserman said, referring to stalled multilateral discussions on ending Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

Reuters