Japan Presses China To Solve Gas Row
Date: 03-Dec-07
Country: CHINA
Author: Isabel Reynolds
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura and Trade Minister Akira Amari struck a warning note among mutual congratulations, telling Wen the issue of disputed natural gas in the sea between the two nations must be resolved.
"We need to solve the issue of exploration in the East China Sea," Komura said in his opening remarks, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official told reporters. "We need political leadership to resolve this issue."
Komura failed to make any progress on the dispute in bilateral talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Saturday.
Amari also raised the problem with Wen, Japanese officials said. Tokyo wants a resolution before Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda visits Beijing late this month or early next.
"We need to put the legal conflict aside and work for joint exploration," a Japanese official quoted Wen as telling the delegation. "Both sides should put forward more innovative ideas."
Eleven rounds of official-level talks have failed to yield a solution to the row, even though Wen and then-prime minister Shinzo Abe agreed in April that officials should come up with a concrete plan by the autumn.
Analysts have said further delays could spark fears in Japan that China is stalling for time by emphasising friendship, rather than addressing real problems.
China and Japan disagree over where the dividing line between their respective exclusive economic zones should lie.
China is piping gas from an area close to what Japan sees as its own economic zone, sparking fears in Tokyo that Beijing could be siphoning resources from geological structures that stretch into the Japanese zone.
The two sides held economic talks on Saturday on a scale not seen since a similar dialogue was broken off after the bloody government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
Despite the continuing dispute over gas, Wen called the summit, which follows a similar one with the European Union last week, a success.
"It's clear China-Japan relations have taken another step forward, especially in the areas of trade and commerce," he told the Japanese ministers.
The two sides released a statement late on Saturday laying out their stances on issues from macroeconomic policy to the environment, intellectual property and food safety, and touching on Japan's wish for a more flexible Chinese currency policy.
A second round of talks is to be held in Japan next year, as part of a string of events aimed at further warming ties cooled by a range of problems, mostly relating to Japan's wartime occupation of parts of China.
(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds, additional reporting by Jason Subler; Editing by Jerry Norton)
