Japan calls for calm

2005-04-11 14:26

Tokyo - Japan on Monday called for dialogue with China to ensure relations with its key economic partner do not deteriorate further after violent anti-Japanese protests in Beijing at the weekend.

Japan on Sunday summoned the Chinese ambassador and demanded compensation and an apology over a demonstration in Beijing where the Japanese embassy was pelted with bottles and cans and a Japanese restaurant was attacked.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said it was time for the two countries to seek calm.

"We have to work hard to prevent mutual misunderstanding from growing," Hosoda told reporters when asked about China's link to the Japanese economy.

"Right now we are exchanging our views through diplomatic channels," he said. "We would like to monitor developments."

Hosoda declined to react to a Chinese foreign ministry statement late on Sunday that said the slide in bilateral relations "does not lie with the Chinese side".

"If I said at this moment that this is terrible and condemned it, it would not make things any better," Hosoda said.

Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura is expected to visit Beijing to smoothen out ties, according to a foreign ministry official.

The Chinese demonstration was called to protest Japan's wartime past and its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

China has been angered by Tokyo's decision to approve a new school textbook that both China and South Korea say glosses over Japanese wartime atrocities.

China harbours deep bitterness over Japan's bloody occupation which ended in 1945. But at the same time, trade has been shooting up, with China last year replacing the United States for the first time as Japan's biggest trading partner.

- AFP