BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Japanese and Chinese leaders held their first meeting yesterday since a diplomatic feud flared over a collision at sea last month, and agreed to start high level talks to repair their relations.
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan and China’s premier Wen Jiabao met for 25 minutes after a working dinner at an Asia-Europe summit in Brussels, their first face-to-face contact since the incident near disputed islands in the East China Sea.
“We both said the current situation is not desirable, and we confirmed a return to the starting point of improving our strategic mutually beneficial relations,” Kan told reporters after the meeting.
“We agreed to hold individual high level talks on a suitable basis,” adding that he saw the disputed islands as Japanese territory. But Kan, who is under heavy political pressure at home over his handling of the row, did not say who would take part in the talks or when they would be held.
Relations between Asia’s two biggest economies dived after Japan’s Coast Guard detained a Chinese trawler skipper whose boat collided with two Japanese patrol ships near the disputed but uninhabited islands. The islands are claimed by both countries and are near potentially huge oil and gas reserves.
Yesterday’s meeting, which was not announced in advance, was held just before Kan headed back to Tokyo after attending the first day of the two-day ASEM leaders’ meeting.
The move may have been aimed at improving relations before Chinese President Hu Jintao’s planned visit to Japan in November for an APEC summit in Yokohama which Tokyo is hosting, a Japanese source said.
The leaders had earlier seemed to avoid each other during the ASEM meeting, staying apart during a photo opportunity, with the Chinese leader pointedly avoiding eye contact with Kan.
Kan, under fire domestically for seeming to cave in to China’s demands after the captain was released, made veiled criticism of Beijing in a speech at Brussels meeting.
“It is important to mutually respect shared rules of the international community, including those of transactions of raw materials and trade in order to deepen the mutually interdependent relations between Asia and Europe and to achieve mutual growth,” Kan said.
