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FM: Summit with Japan, S.Korea postponed
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-04 13:37
An annual summit between China, Japan and South Korea scheduled for
mid-December has been postponed due to "current conditions", the Chinese Foreign
Ministry said on Sunday.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
leaves the controversial Yasukuni war shrine in October
2005.[AFP] | The summit that was to have taken
place on the sidelines of a regional conference in Malaysia had been postponed
to an appropriate time due to the "current atmosphere and conditions", the
ministry said on its Web site, www.fmprc.gov.cn.
The statement gave no further details, saying only that China would continue
cooperation with the other two parties and hoped that obstacles to stable
development could be removed.
Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported last week that the three-way summit,
which has taken place every year since 1999, might be cancelled due to Chinese
and Korean anger over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits
to a war shrine.
Tokyo's ties with Beijing and Seoul have been chilled by Koizumi's
pilgrimages to the Yasukuni shrine. A handful of convicted war criminals are
honoured there alongside millions of war dead.
Koizumi last went there in October, triggering protests from the two
Asian neighbours.
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