Kan Repeated `Firm' Stance on Island Dispute in Talks With China's Hu
Hu Jintao shakes hands with Naoto Kan
Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images
Chinese President Hu Jintao, left, shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan ahead of the start of The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders retreat in Yokohama on November 13, 2010.
Chinese President Hu Jintao, left, shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan ahead of the start of The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders retreat in Yokohama on November 13, 2010. Photographer: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan reiterated his country’s “firm” stance on disputed islands in the East China Sea during a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, while also calling for “mutually beneficial” ties.
“Regarding the Senkaku Islands, Prime Minister Kan conveyed Japan’s firm stance,” Tetsuro Fukuyama, Japan’s deputy chief cabinet secretary, told reporters after the leaders met for about 20 minutes today in Yokohama, Japan. Still, “I feel that Japan and China took a major step toward improving ties.”
Tensions between Asia’s two biggest economies increased after a Sept. 7 collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and Japanese Coast Guard boats near the islands, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. Sovereignty over the area includes rights to undersea natural gas and oil reserves and China and Japan have yet to implement a 2008 agreement to jointly develop the gas fields.
The meeting between the leaders of Japan and China at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation was only agreed upon today. Fukuyama said that Hu also commented on the island dispute issue during the Kan meeting. He declined to elaborate on what Kan and Hu said about the issue.
Hu and Kan agreed that a mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries in the long term was in both countries’ interest and was also “extremely important” for regional and global development, Fukuyama said.
U.S. Support
In a meeting earlier today with U.S. President Barack Obama, Kan expressed appreciation for American support in Japan’s territorial disputes with China and Russia.
“In Japan’s relations with China and Russia, we’ve had some problems and the United States has supported Japan throughout, so I expressed my appreciation,” Kan said of his talks with Obama. “For the peace and security of the countries in the region, the presence of the United States and the presence of the U.S. military I believe is only becoming increasingly important.”
China earlier this month rebuffed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s offer to mediate the island dispute with Japan and rejected her contention that the area at the center of the row falls under the U.S. security blanket.
“The Diaoyu islands are Chinese territory, and the dispute over the islands with Japan is a matter between China and Japan,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement. Clinton’s position is “extremely wrong” and the U.S. should “correct its wrongful stance immediately,” Ma said.
Clinton said at an Oct. 30 press conference that the U.S. doesn’t take a position on sovereignty in regard to the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.
“But we have made it very clear that the islands are part of our mutual treaty obligations, and the obligation to defend Japan,” she said.
-- With assistance from Takashi Hirokawa in Tokyo. Editors: Ken McCallum, Patrick Harrington.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo at ssakamaki1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net
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