Meeting with Japan, South Korea ruled out
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-08 19:59

Japan's ties with Beijing and Seoul have chilled with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's pilgrimages to the Yasukuni shrine, which they see as a symbol of past Japanese militarism.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is also president of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), delivers a speech duirng a LDP meeting in Tokyo November 30, 2005. A Japan-China-South Korea summit is cancelled for the first time in six years due to Chinese and Korean anger over Koizumi's visits to a war shrine, a newspaper said on Wednesday. Japan's ties with China and South Korea have been chilled by Koizumi's annual pilgrimages to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, which they regard as a symbol of past Japanese militarism. [Reuters]

A handful of convicted war criminals are honored there alongside millions of war dead.

Visits by government figures to the shrine are guaranteed to inflame Japan's neighbors. Older Koreans have bitter memories of Japan's brutal 1910-1945 colonial rule, while Chinese have not forgotten its 1931-45 invasion and occupation of parts of China.

Qin also denounced comments by Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso urging more transparency in the military and questioned Tokyo's own military intentions.

"It's Japan which needs to explain its recent military movements, because it has caused great concern for its neighbors," Qin said.

Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has formally adopted a draft of a new constitution that would recognize the nation's right to maintain a military and play a bigger role in global security.

The present pacifist constitution was drafted in 1947, after World War II, and has never been altered.