FM: Summit with Japan, S.Korea postponed
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-04 13:37

An annual summit between China, Japan and South Korea scheduled for mid-December has been postponed due to "current conditions", the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi leaves the controversial Yasukuni war shrine in October 2005.[AFP]

The summit that was to have taken place on the sidelines of a regional conference in Malaysia had been postponed to an appropriate time due to the "current atmosphere and conditions", the ministry said on its Web site, www.fmprc.gov.cn.

The statement gave no further details, saying only that China would continue cooperation with the other two parties and hoped that obstacles to stable development could be removed.

Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported last week that the three-way summit, which has taken place every year since 1999, might be cancelled due to Chinese and Korean anger over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to a war shrine.

Tokyo's ties with Beijing and Seoul have been chilled by Koizumi's pilgrimages to the Yasukuni shrine. A handful of convicted war criminals are honoured there alongside millions of war dead.

Koizumi last went there in October, triggering protests from the two Asian neighbours.