China minister in Japan to prepare way for Wen

Tokyo, Feb 15: Japan and China hope to set the stage for a red carpet visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during talks in Tokyo beginning today, but regional rivalry and friction over their wartime past lurk in the background.

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing arrived in Tokyo for talks with Japanese leaders, four months after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended a fence-mending summit in Beijing and just days after the two countries helped thrash out a deal aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

''The main agenda will probably be to lay the groundwork for Premier Wen Jiabao to Japan in April,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference.

''There are various issues of concern, but we agreed during Prime Minister Abe's visit to China in October to build a mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests.'' Li was to call on Abe and meet Foreign Minister Taro Aso on Friday after seeing Abe's junior coalition partner today.

Sino-Japanese ties grew frosty under Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who made pilgrimages to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine -- seen by Beijing as a symbol of Japan's past militarism because World War Two leaders convicted as war criminals are honoured there along with millions of war dead.

Wen's visit, expected to take place in April, would be the first by a top Chinese leader since then-premier Zhu Rongji in October 2000, before Koizumi came to power.

''In general, I think he (Li) wants to establish the best ways to maximise the good that comes from Wen's visit,'' said Liu Jiangyong, an expert on Japan at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Once known for talking tough toward China, Abe has striven since taking office in September to improve ties, partly by declining to say if he would visit Yasukuni. He visited the shrine before taking the nation's top job.

History Haunts

With domestic support sliding due to doubts about his leadership, Abe could use a diplomatic success before local elections in April and an upper house poll in July.

Sources of friction nonetheless abound.

Japan has signed on to a deal under which North Korea will shut its Yongbyon nuclear plant in return for energy aid.

But Abe insists Tokyo will provide no financial help until a feud with Pyongyang over Japanese citizens kidnapped decades ago is settled.

A quarrel over sea boundaries flared up this month after Japan spotted a Chinese research ship in disputed waters in the East China Sea.

The two energy-hungry countries are at odds over oil and gas fields in the area, a topic that may come up during Li's visit.

Japan has also expressed concern over China's recent satellite-killing missile test, the first known experiment of its type in more than 20 years.

Tokyo has long been wary of its rival's growing military strength, while Beijing looks askance at Japanese moves to revise its pacifist constitution.

History also haunts ties, especially around the 70th anniversary of Japanese soldiers' 1937 slaughter of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war in Nanjing.

China has put the Nanjing death toll at 300,000.

An Allied tribunal after World War Two estimated that around 142,000 were killed and some Japanese conservatives deny there was any massacre at all.

Reuters