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Beijing cancels visit by Japanese foreign minister

China yesterday canceled Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura's planned visit to Beijing only one day after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's controversial visit to a Tokyo war shrine.

The announcement, made just days before Machimura was expected in the Chinese capital, appeared to mark an escalation in already strained relations between the two Asian giants.

"Given the present serious situation of China-Japan relations, this visit is not timely and the Chinese side is not in a position to receive the visit," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan (孔泉) said in a regular briefing.

The decision to postpone the visit came one day after Koizumi visited the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, which honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including notorious war criminals executed after World War II.

Koizumi's previous four visits had all prompted strong protests from China, which suffered immensely under Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 1940s.

Koizumi made the visit on Monday despite a series of large anti-Japanese protests in China this year sparked by Tokyo's approval of history textbooks which downplay its wartime atrocities.

Japan had proposed to China that Machimura make a visit from late this week, the minister said in Tokyo last week. But no firm date had been set.

In Tokyo yesterday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, the top Japanese government spokesman, said the meeting was "still in the process of being coordinated."

"There has been no clear progress as to the question about what will become of it in the end," he told a news conference.

Machimura's visit was intended to be a fence-mending trip to improve ties that have soured over its treatment of history, disputed energy resources and Beijing's opposition to Tokyo's bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat.

Last Friday, Machimura said he planned to visit China soon and hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing (李肇星).

"We have not fixed a definite date with them yet, but we have proposed I go over the next weekend and we have mostly come to terms," Machimura said.

Japanese news reports said he would make the visit on Oct. 23 and Oct. 24.

The Jiji Press news agency and other media had said Machimura hoped to pave the way for a meeting between Koizumi and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).

High-level meetings between the two country's leaders have been banned by China since Koizumi began paying annual visits to the shrine after taking office in 2001.

China on Monday angrily protested Koizumi's latest shrine visit, calling it "outrageous" and a "serious provocation," warning that bilateral relations have been further damaged as a result.

"The Chinese government and Chinese people express strong indignation and lodged a strong protest to the Japanese side over Koizumi's wrongful act which hurts the feeling and dignity of the victimized countries and seriously damages the Sino-Japanese relationship," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"Prime Minister Koizumi must shoulder all the responsibility of the serious damage to Sino-Japanese relations caused by his wrongful actions," it said.
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