HANOI (Reuters) – The premiers of China and Japan met at an Asian regional summit in a bid to defuse a territorial dispute yesterday, while the United States urged Asia’s two big economies to cool the standoff and proposed three-way talks.
Expectations of a bilateral talk between Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan were dashed on Friday when China cancelled it, blaming Japan for “damaging the atmosphere” at the Asia-Pacific summit in Hanoi by raising the issue of the disputed Diaoyu islands, called Senkaku in Japanese.
A Japanese official, however, said the two leaders subsequently held an “informal” 10-minute meeting on the summit sidelines yesterday in a seemingly positive step.
“I am confident that we can maintain a relationship in which we can cooperate in a meaningful manner,” Kan told a news conference.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who met her Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Hanoi, urged calm on both sides, and offered to host trilateral talks to bring relations back on an even keel.
“We have certainly encouraged both Japan and China to seek peaceful resolution of any disagreements,” Clinton told a news conference. “It is in all of our interest for China and Japan to have stable, peaceful relations.”
China and Japan have long-locked horns over sovereignty claims in the oil-and-gas rich East China Sea but such disputes have rarely damaged commercial ties between the economic giants.
Clinton, in Vietnam for the first U.S. participation in an East Asia Summit (EAS), also got assurances from China over its policy on exporting rare earth minerals that it wished to be a “reliable supplier”.
“Minister Yang clarified China has no intention of withholding these minerals from the market,” she said.
