Meeting with Japan, South Korea ruled out (Reuters) Updated: 2005-12-08 19:59
Japan's ties with Beijing and Seoul have chilled with Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi's pilgrimages to the Yasukuni shrine, which they see as a
symbol of past Japanese militarism.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi,
who is also president of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP), delivers a speech duirng a LDP meeting in Tokyo November 30, 2005.
A Japan-China-South Korea summit is cancelled for the first time in six
years due to Chinese and Korean anger over Koizumi's visits to a war
shrine, a newspaper said on Wednesday. Japan's ties with China and South
Korea have been chilled by Koizumi's annual pilgrimages to Tokyo's
Yasukuni shrine, which they regard as a symbol of past Japanese
militarism. [Reuters] |
A handful of convicted war criminals are honored there alongside millions of
war dead.
Visits by government figures to the shrine are guaranteed to inflame Japan's
neighbors. Older Koreans have bitter memories of Japan's brutal 1910-1945
colonial rule, while Chinese have not forgotten its 1931-45 invasion and
occupation of parts of China.
Qin also denounced comments by Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso urging more
transparency in the military and questioned Tokyo's own military intentions.
"It's Japan which needs to explain its recent military movements, because it
has caused great concern for its neighbors," Qin said.
Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has formally adopted a draft of a new
constitution that would recognize the nation's right to maintain a military and
play a bigger role in global security.
The present pacifist constitution was drafted in 1947, after World War II,
and has never been altered.
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