CHINA AND Japan have taken steps to ease mounting tensions over their competing claims for sovereignty over a group of islands off the Taiwanese coast.
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan resolved at a private meeting in Brussels to start high-level talks to improve strained relations between the two Asian giants. The timing of the talks remains unclear.
Tension between the two countries burst into the open last month after the Japanese coast guard detained the captain of a trawler that collided with two Japanese patrol ships near the islands, known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan.
Although the islands are uninhabited, they lie close to potentially valuable reserves of oil and gas. The incident in the East China Sea prompted the worst diplomatic dispute between the two countries for years.
Four Japanese construction workers were detained in China on suspicion of illegally entering a military zone, but three were later subsequently released.
The two leaders met for 25 minutes on Monday night, at the end of a formal dinner at the Asia-Europe summit. They are reputed to have run into each other in a hall and sat down together on chairs as they talked with the help of interpreters.
Neither man yielded his country’s claim to the islands so the affair is far from finished but the meeting heralds a decisive effort to defuse the stand-off.
“We both said the current situation is not desirable, and we confirmed a return to the starting point of improving our strategic mutually beneficial relations,” Mr Kan told reporters.
He said the disputed islands were part of Japan but said he agreed with Mr Wen to “hold individual high-level talks on a suitable basis” .
In Beijing, news agency Xinhua reported that Mr Wen told his Japanese counterpart that the islands had formed part of Chinese national territory “since ancient times”.
The agency said Mr Wen stressed that it was in both countries’ interests to protect and advance their “strategic relationship of mutual benefit” and both agreed to improve ties.
The dispute had an immediate impact when China suspended supplies of rare minerals to Japan, products crucial to auto parts and electronics manufacturing.
As such it threatened to damage valuable two-way trade between the two countries. This is worth more than €180 billion per year, and China has been Japan’s biggest trading partner since 2009.
The talks came as Europe stepped up pressure on China for a speedy revaluation of its currency.
Although Mr Wen delivered an implicit rebuff to such demands as the summit opened two days ago, key European leaders said they made the case for a higher exchange rate at a private meeting with the premier.
Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Junker said the 16 euro countries wanted an “orderly, significant and broad-based appreciation” of the yuan.
