| China rules out meeting with Koizumi(Xinhua/AFP/AP)
 Updated: 2005-11-30 13:14
 Envoy: Japan, China must resolve disputes Japan and China must resolve their differences in the interest of regional 
stability, the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo said Wednesday, adding that Washington's 
role as a mediator was limited.  Despite growing trade between the economic powerhouses, diplomatic relations 
between China and Japan have sunk to their lowest in decades amid a series of 
territorial disputes and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to 
the Yasukuni Shrine. 
 "We hope Japan and China can resolve their differences because it's important 
for the whole region that everyone get along," U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer 
said at a news conference. 
 "I don't know that we have a direct role to play," he said. "We aren't the 
last arbiter of every dispute in the world." 
 Relations between the two countries plunged again last month when Japanese 
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited a controversial Tokyo war shrine for 
the fifth time since taking office in 2001, prompting protests from China and 
South Korea and complicating diplomatic relations. 
 Also hobbling relations is a dispute over undersea gas deposits, ownership of 
islets in the East China Sea and Japan's adoption of textbooks that critics say 
whitewash World War II atrocities. 
 Last week, China's ambassador to Tokyo called the visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni 
Shrine the most pressing issue facing their countries and said the issue needs 
to be resolved as quickly as possible. 
 
 
 |