Japanese vice foreign minister will visit South Korea next week
to mend bilateral relationship, which was further strained due to a
recent row over sovereignty of controversial islets, Kyodo
News said on Thursday.
During his two-day visit, Yasuhisa Shiozaki is expected to meet
South Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ban Ki-Moon and
discuss the issue of a set of South Korea-controlled islets in the
Sea of Japan, which is also claimed by Japan.
The set of islets in question is known as Takeshima in Japan and
Dokdo in South Korea. Last week, South Korea dispatched gunboats to
the disputed area after Japan announced it would conduct a maritime
survey around the mostly uninhabited islets.
The two reached a last-minute compromise to resolve the standoff
on Saturday, with Japan agreeing to cancel the survey as long South
Korea delays plans to rename seafloor topography near the
islets.
Tokyo and Seoul agreed to resume talks as early as in May on
demarcating their exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the waters near
the islets. Such talks have been suspended since 2000.
Besides disputes on the islets, the two nations are also at odds
over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to
the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 top war criminals are
honored along with over 2 million war dead. Seoul also held that
several versions of Japan's history textbooks whitewashed Japan's
wartime atrocities.
(Xinhua News Agency April 28, 2006)
