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Koizumi, Roh hold summit in Seoul

A South Korean student, left, is detained by a riot police officer during an anti-Japan rally in Seoul yesterday. PHOTO: AP

Japan and South Korea tried to heal ties wounded by their spat over islands and Tokyo's wartime history with a leaders' summit yesterday in Seoul that also focused on the international standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters that he wanted a frank exchange before heading into yesterday's meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

"It's a waste to stop friendly ties just because there are disagreements about some things," Koizumi said head of his arrival in Seoul for a one-day visit.

"It's important that both Japan and South Korea want to promote friendly relations for the benefit of the entire region."

Relations have chilled in recent months over Japan's renewed claim to a group of islets that are controlled by South Korea and Tokyo's approval of history textbooks that critics say gloss over Japan's brutal military occupation of much of East Asia in the 1930s and 1940s.

Koizumi's annual pilgrimages to a Tokyo war shrine that honors Japanese war dead, including convicted war criminals, have also triggered angry reactions from South Korea, China and other Asian nations that suffered atrocities at the hands of Japan's wartime troops.

Local media have said the summit between Koizumi and Roh would take place in the "worst atmosphere."

Koizumi's visit sparked the ire of small groups of protesters who gathered yesterday at the Japan-ese Embassy in downtown Seoul, far outnumbered by dozens of riot police and journalists.

Anti-Japanese protests have been a common scene there amid the recent tensions.

An Associated Press photographer saw about 15 students detained after they broke into a Japanese cultural center, but authorities gave no specific details.

Another group of demonstrators made a failed attempt to block Koizumi's motorcade on its way to meet Roh.

The Japanese leader also said he wanted to discuss how the two countries can cooperate to seek the elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a visiting South Korean minister last Friday that his reclusive country could end its yearlong boycott of international nuclear negotiations as soon as next month and that the North didn't need atomic weapons as long as the regime's security was assured.
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