Japan believes Premier Wen Jiabao's April 11-13 visit will boost
bilateral ties and hopes the two countries would look for common
ground to build trust.
The tour is expected to move all the issues forward because even
a small step can bring the two sides much closer, minister of
Japan's embassy in Beijing Ide Keiji said Thursday.
The focus will be on confidence building on the East China Sea
gas fields dispute because the two countries' foreign ministers
agreed on Tuesday to expedite negotiations and settle it through
mutually acceptable means.
The two sides are keen to move forward in time for Wen's
three-day visit to Japan, he said.
"We are thinking of cooperating with China in helping African
countries," Keiji said, calling November's Beijing summit for African countries an
important diplomatic event.
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The two countries are looking forward to step up substantive
cooperation in the fields of environmental protection, too. In
fact, China wants Japan's waste-cutting technology to protect its
environment.
Japan agreed to give more than US$500 million last week to help
seven water and environmental projects in China.
Wen's visit that includes a summit meeting between the two prime
ministers sends a message to the world that Sino-Japanese ties are
moving forward at a high level and are in the interest of both the
countries, Keiji said.
"We should have better ties, a fact deeply realized by the
peoples of the two countries," he said.
Japan attaches great importance to diplomatic relations with its
neighbors, Keiji said, adding that China is one of the most
important among them.
Wen's visit will forge "strategically and mutually beneficial
relations" between the two countries as agreed by President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe during the latter's ice-breaking visit to China in October,
Keiji said.
Japan welcomes China's development and its increasing role in
the international and regional arenas, and the two countries should
work together to address some of today's challenges, he said.
Wen's visit to Japan will be the first by a Chinese premier in
seven years during which bilateral ties were almost frozen because
of former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated
visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japans' war criminals.
The controversial shrine honors the country's war dead, including
14 Class-A World War II criminals, and is seen by Japan's neighbors
and some other Asian countries as a symbol of the country's
militaristic past.
Speaking to Japanese media in Beijing on Wednesday, Wen said
that some Japanese leaders have visited the shrine repeatedly,
hurting the feelings of the Chinese people and "I hope this will
never happen again".
The official position of the Japanese government, Keiji said, is
"we should face history squarely" and "let historians study and do
their job".
Scholars from China and Japan met twice last December to discuss
joint historical research, with the intention of narrowing the
historical differences between the two countries. The two sides
will submit a report in June next year.
"We hope highly that these people will produce positive results
and help us understand each other," Keiji said.
In his post in Beijing for three and a half years, the Japanese
diplomat said it was high time the Chinese people saw Japan for
what it was and vice versa. As 2007 is the China-Japan sports and
cultural year, his embassy is expecting more than 200 events to be
held throughout China.
A Japanese carnival will be held in Beijing in September to
celebrate the 35th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan
relations, he said.
(China Daily April 6, 2007)
