Japan, China pledge warmer ties, but no deal on gas fields

Fri Dec 28, 12:22 PM ET
BEIJING (AFP) - China and Japan pledged on Friday to build on their rapidly warming ties, as Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda met the Chinese leadership, but a dispute over maritime gas fields remained unresolved.

Fukuda, on his first visit to China since taking office in September, held talks with President Hu Jintao to lay the groundwork for closer cooperation between the Asian powers in trade, climate change and other fields.
"Since taking office, you have emphasised the importance of friendship between China and Japan," Hu told Fukuda at the meeting.
"I believe your visit here will further build on" the warming bilateral ties, he said.
Fukuda's visit to Beijing would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, when China and Japan had no top-level contacts at all in what was a major cause of tension in Asia.
China cut high-level ties with Japan during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi due to his visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which venerates war criminals who invaded China, alongside another 2.5 million war dead.
But Fukuda and his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, have stayed away from the shrine, paving the way for the dramatic thaw in bilateral relations that will be capped when Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Japan next year.
Fukuda earlier on the day held lengthy talks with Premier Wen Jiabao and Wu Bangguo, the number-two leader in the Chinese Communist Party.
"There have indeed been various problems in the relationship between Japan and China. But it is time for us to overcome these problems and push forward the development of our relationship," Fukuda told reporters after meeting Wen.
Fukuda said the two nations had made progress in finding a resolution to their competing claims to lucrative gas fields in the East China Sea.
"We shared a determination to solve this problem at an early stage. We will try to swiftly solve this issue," Fukuda said in comments echoed by Wen.
But no specifics about any compromise from either side or a timeframe for a resolution of the dispute were made public. Before heading to Beijing on Thursday, Fukuda had voiced hope for a breakthrough on the issue.
Eleven rounds of negotiations on the gas fields since 2004 have made little progress, with China rejecting the maritime border which Japan considers a starting point for discussions.
Speaking in Tokyo on Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said there were still major differences between the two nations on the issue.
"China has shown some understanding of Japan's principles, but I don't feel we've been able to get over the remaining problems," Komura told reporters.
Fukuda, who arrived on Thursday for a four-day trip, is due to travel to the economic hub of Tianjin on Saturday to look at Japanese investments there.
Japan is the biggest foreign investor in China and trade between the two nations was worth 207.35 billion dollars last year, up 12.4 percent from 2005.
The nations also on Friday signed an agreement that would see Japan help China work to combat global warming.
Japan will invite about 50 Chinese researchers each year over the next four years to be trained in the technology and science of fighting climate change.
In another effort to boost engagement and deepen trust between the two sides, Fukuda announced Japan would send a warship to China next year.
And in an apparent move to placate China, Fukuda said he would not support Taiwan's planned referendum on United Nations membership.
"We don't want a situation in which Taiwan's referendum leads to tensions between (Taiwan and China)," he said.
Fukuda and Wen also discussed the efforts to end North Korea's nuclear programmes, but they made no major statement afterwards about the disarmament process.

Japan divided by compromise on wartime suicides

Thu Dec 27, 2:35 AM ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's deep internal divide over its wartime history shows little sign of narrowing after the government compromised on school textbook references to military involvement in mass suicides in Okinawa in 1945.
Many in Japan's southernmost prefecture were infuriated by a government decision, made under conservative then-prime minister Shinzo Abe this year, to cut from history textbooks a reference to the army forcing people to kill themselves as U.S. troops invaded Okinawa in the final stages of World War Two.
Okinawan leaders guardedly welcomed new wording proposed by publishers and accepted by Education Minister Kisaburo Tokai on Wednesday, which mentions Japanese military involvement but stops short of saying soldiers forced people to kill themselves.
"I think they have more or less done what we asked for, which was to restore the references to the mass suicides," Toshinobu Nakasato, speaker of the Okinawan assembly, which passed resolutions condemning the previous texts, said in a statement.
But he and others remained dissatisfied that direct coercion was not mentioned in accounts of the bloody Battle of Okinawa because historians on a textbook panel said there was no evidence of military orders to commit suicide.
"I think there can be coercion without a direct order," said Kiku Nakayama, a military nurse on Okinawa during the war, who says grenades were handed out when her hospital was disbanded.
"I really want them to include something about how people were forced," she added in a telephone interview.
One of the eight high school textbooks will now include a reference to the military distributing two grenades each to a group of young people, ordering them to use one on the enemy and the other to kill themselves.
Conservative media blasted the revisions, symbolic of changes made under moderate Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who has distanced himself from some of his nationalist predecessor's policies since he took office in September.
Some newspapers said the government had been swayed into a political decision by a September demonstration on Okinawa, which organizers said attracted 110,000 people, although the Yomiuri Shimbun quoted a security firm as estimating the figure was closer to 20,000.
"The government should never repeat the stupidity of allowing political intervention in the textbook screening process," the Yomiuri Shimbun said in an editorial, whose sentiments were echoed by the conservative Sankei newspaper.
Tokyo's dispute with Okinawa, a separate kingdom until the 19th century, is a domestic echo of long-running rows with other Asian countries, especially China, over responsibility for Japan's invasion and occupation of much of the region before and during the war.
Some conservative historians in Japan, for example, deny troops massacred civilians in Nanjing in 1937, where China says 300,000 died. But the issue, along with that of Asian women used as sex slaves by the Japanese military in the early 20th century, also divides the Japanese public.
Japan and China set up a joint panel of historians a year ago, aiming to narrow their differences over history.
As in some other Asian countries, Japan's school textbooks must be approved by central government panels, meaning their contents are often seen as the official government line.
(Editing by Jerry Norton)

Police not told of 4,600 missing foreigners

The Yomiuri Shimbun
Companies and organizations employing foreign trainees and technical interns failed to inform police that such employees had gone missing in 4,628 cases between 2002 and 2006, about half the total of such cases in that period, it has been learned.
The visitors were accepted as part of a program that allows foreigners to work in Japan for a certain period after receiving technical training.
With some of those who went missing becoming involved in serious crimes such as robbery, the Justice Ministry has ordered the firms and groups that employ them to notify the police without exception when their trainees go missing.
The program was introduced in 1993 to provide an opportunity for foreign trainees to learn about Japanese technologies.
According to the ministry, 9,607 of the 374,845 people taking part in the scheme between 2002 and 2006 went missing.
The trainees receive only a small allowance, and a number of them have been found working illegally at other companies.
When the police receive a request to search for a missing person, this information is shared by police forces across the country and can be used for questioning or initial investigations of incidents and accidents.
However, they were only requested to search for 4,979 of the missing trainees--about 52 percent--over the five-year period.
According to the National Police Agency, there is an increasing trend of trainees becoming involved in crime, with 585 such people committing crimes in 2006--up 27 on the previous year.
Some of the crimes committed by these missing people have been especially brutal.
A Chinese man stabbed a woman and stole cash from her in a Yokohama apartment in April last year, while another Chinese man was found to be the ringleader in a series of robberies in which about 43 million yen was stolen from locations such as dental surgeries in Saitama and Chiba prefectures in 2004.
The ministry determines the rules of compliance for the companies and groups that take on foreign trainees and interns.
Its operational guidelines state they should report the disappearance of a person to immigration authorities, but do not state that they should notify the police.
Immigration authorities, even after receiving such information, do not supply it to the police in the majority of cases.
Even new guidelines announced by the ministry Wednesday do not state that these employers should notify the police when recruits go missing. The guidelines instead instruct them to notify the police through regional immigration authorities.
"We intended to have these companies and organizations [that recruit foreign trainees] notify the police [of missing people]," a spokesman for the ministry's entry and status division said. "We didn't expect so many cases of nonnotification."
"Because missing trainees can't formally be employed in other work, there's a chance they may turn to crime," said Kiyoshi Yasutomi, a professor at Keio Law School and expert in immigration administration.
"Another problem is the fact that the police only have data on about half of those missing, and can't respond quickly when a crime takes place," he added. "Communication channels between the police and immigration authorities must be improved."
(Dec. 30, 2007)

Japan doubts NKorea will meet nuclear deadline: official

Wed Dec 26, 3:09 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan does not expect North Korea to meet a year-end deadline to declare its nuclear programmes but wants a full accounting once it does, an official said Wednesday.

The communist state was given until the end of 2007 to disable and declare all its nuclear programmes in the next stage of a six-nation aid-for-disarmament deal reached with Pyongyang earlier this year.
A senior Japanese foreign ministry official, who requested anonymity, said diplomats in Tokyo were not holding their breath.
"These are peaceful days for us," he told reporters.
"The year-end date isn't significant. What's important is a perfectly accurate declaration of whether North Korea has the will to abandon its nuclear programme," he said.
North Korea, which tested an atom bomb last year, has gone ahead with disablement of its plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor, the most visible symbol of its nuclear drive.
But the declaration has proved difficult, with South Korea indicating the obstacle was over whether Pyongyang was ready to disclose a suspected uranium enrichment programme.
China, North Korea's main ally and host of the six-nation talks, said Tuesday that Pyongyang was likely to miss the year-end deadline but stressed that the "majority" of the work would be finished.
Japan has been the most critical member of the six-nation talks, sometimes putting itself at odds with the United States, its main ally.
Japan has tense relations with North Korea in part due to the regime's kidnappings of Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.

Japanese mayor resigns in US base row: official

Wed Dec 26
TOKYO (AFP) - The mayor of a western Japanese city who fervently opposed a plan to host more US warplanes offered to resign Wednesday in a standoff with supporters of the military base.Iwakuni, 935 kilometres (580 miles) west of Tokyo, would become one of the biggest US air bases in Northeast Asia under a plan approved by the two countries to station 57 more US carrier-based warplanes there.Mayor Katsusuke Ihara submitted his resignation to the municipal council, which supports the US base, after a budgeting row linked to the deployment, a city hall spokesman said."I would like you to pass the budget bill in exchange for my resignation," Ihara told the assembly. The assembly later approved his resignation and Ihara was set to step down on Friday, Jiji Press reported.Iwakuni's budget has fallen short as the central government scrapped 3.5 billion yen (31 million dollars) in subsidies to the city because the mayor opposed the plan to host the additional aircraft.Ihara has instead proposed a special bond issue to make up for the shortfall. The assembly has rejected the plan, pressuring Ihara to give in to the central government's plans.In a 2006 non-binding referendum, an overwhelming majority of residents in Iwakuni voted against the plan to bring more warplanes to the city, which is already home to some 3,000 Marines.But the central government has since promised compensation in the form of funding to build new buildings in the city.Japan, which has been officially pacifist since World War II, relies on US troops under a security alliance.The government says the shift to Iwakuni would ease the burden on other communities hosting US forces, particularly in the southern Okinawa island chain, but local activists accuse US troops of causing noise and crime.Iwakuni is seen as strategically significant as it is one of the closest points in Japan to the Korean peninsula. The city is just 800 kilometres (500 miles) from the North Korean capital Pyongyang.

Japan may review aid to Pakistan following Bhutto's assassination

Friday, December 28, 2007
TOKYO — Japan implicitly warned Friday that it may review its aid to Pakistan depending on developments following Thursday's assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, but promised to continue supporting Islamabad's democratization efforts. Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura mourned Bhutto's death as a "significant loss" and along with other Japanese ministers condemned the attack as a despicable act of terror.
"We can't say that an assassination by terrorists would directly lead to a change in the provision of aid, but we must consider all sorts of factors while closely watching the developments from now on," Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said when asked if Japanese foreign aid to Pakistan will be affected. Similarly, Machimura said in a separate news conference, "While there are certain limitations to the influence Japan holds, we must seriously contemplate to what extent Japan can do with its diplomacy."

Design firm to buy 50% of copyright fees for Kurosawa scripts

Saturday, December 29, 2007
TOKYO — DesignEXchange Co said Friday that it will acquire the right to 50% of copyright fees paid for film scripts by the late Akira Kurosawa, the celebrated Japanese film director.
The Japanese design company, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Mothers market for startup firms, will obtain the right for 1.4 billion yen from Yokohama-based Kurosawa Production. It expects brisk revenue from events scheduled in 2010 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Kurosawa's birth.
The company will purchase the right to copyright royalties for 71 scripts written or cowritten by Kurosawa, including "Rashomon," "Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo." The transaction also covers copyright fees paid for remaking the scripts, rewriting them for television and animated versions and releasing unscreened works.
It is the first time that copyright on Kurosawa's works has been sold to a third party.
In late March, DesignEXchange accepted Hisao Kurosawa, Kurosawa's eldest son and head of Kurosawa Production, as an outside board member and paid 400 million yen for the right to act as intermediary in negotiations between Kurosawa Production and film companies for remakes of Kurosawa movies.
For the latest deal on copyright fees, DesignEXchange will issue share-purchase warrants to a Tokyo-based investment fund to raise some 1.1 billion yen in fresh funds.

Fukuda plays catch with Wen

Saturday, December 29, 2007

BEIJING — Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda played a game of catch with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Saturday, in what is perhaps a symbolic move on the warming of their countries' ties, a day after agreeing to build on recent improvements in relations.
Fukuda, dressed in a white baseball uniform and a red cap, threw and caught baseballs in a gymnasium at Beijing's Diaoyutai State Guesthouse with Wen, also in a red cap and a gray baseball uniform. The event was squeezed into Fukuda's schedule after the Japanese prime minister made a request to Wen in a light moment during their talks on Friday. Wen, who wore a Ritsumeikan uniform during the game, arrived in the gymnasium first, and jogged for warm-up. The game between the two leaders — Fukuda is 71 years old, Wen is 65 — lasted about five minutes.

Fukuda opposes Taiwan referendum

Saturday, December 29, 2007

BEIJING — Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda treaded carefully over the sensitive issue of Taiwan in his talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday, withholding support for a March referendum by the self-ruled island, but stopping short of opposing it outright.
The comments by Fukuda on the plebiscite — which will ask voters whether they support Taipei's entry into the United Nations under the name "Taiwan" — came amid Beijing's strong opposition to it, which it views as a provocative assertion of sovereignty. "We do not wish tensions to increase in the cross-strait situation over the referendum," Fukuda told a press conference after his meeting with Wen. "I told Premier Wen that we cannot support this if it is to lead to a unilateral change in the current situation," he added.

'Croc-hunter' Irwin's family to campaign against Japanese whaling

ENVIRONMENT'Croc-hunter' Irwin's family to campaign against Japanese whaling
Friday, December 28, 2007 at 04:49 EST
SYDNEY — "Crocodile hunter" Steve Irwin's family plans a campaign against Japanese whaling to show that scientific data about whales can be obtained without killing them, Irwin's widow said Thursday.
Terri Irwin said the project would be launched in 2008 through a whale watching business she bought after her husband's death last year.
"We can actually learn everything the Japanese are learning with lethal research by using non-lethal research," she told Channel Nine television.
"That's what I'm embarking on in 2008. We are determined to show the Japanese they can stop all whaling, not just humpbacks," she added.
The research is to be carried out in the southern hemisphere in cooperation with Oregon State University, she said.
Japan has been under fire for defying international protests and sending its whaling fleet into Antarctic waters to hunt around 1,000 whales, ostensibly for "scientific" purposes, exploiting a loophole in a 1986 moratorium on whaling.
However, the Japanese bowed slightly to pressure last week by abandoning plans to kill around 50 humpbacks, which form the backbone of Australia's and New Zealand's lucrative whale watching industry.
Irwin's daughter Bindi also plans to record a new anti-whaling song, "Save Me," and publicize it in Asia in a bid to raise awareness of the issue there, Terri Irwin said.
"Whales are such an integral part to the ocean and hunting is such a cruel and awful thing," she said.
"It needs to be something that is in our ancient past, not something that we continue to do."
Steve Irwin, famed for his daring antics with dangerous animals, was killed by a stingray barb to his chest while filming last year on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.(AFP)

Pakistani former premier Benazir Bhutto assassinated

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AFP) — Pakistani opposition leader and former premier Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at a party rally late Thursday, plunging the nation deeper into crisis less than two weeks before elections.
She was shot in the neck before a suicide bomber blew himself up at a park in the northern city of Rawalpindi, killing around 20 people, after Bhutto had just addressed supporters.
The slaying stunned leaders around the world who urged calm and warned that extremists must not be allowed to destabilise the nuclear-armed nation before the January 8 parliamentary vote.
US President George W. Bush, for whom Pakistan is a vital ally in the "war on terror," called it a "cowardly act" and appealed to its government to stay on the path back toward democracy after eight years of military rule.
Several witnesses said they heard at least one shot before the blast, which tore off limbs. People ran in panic, screaming as they trampled over pieces of human flesh. Puddles of blood dotted the road.
"There was an enormous explosion, and then I saw body parts flying through the air," said Mirza Fahin, a professor at a local college.
"When the dust cleared, I saw mutilated bodies lying in blood. I have never seen anything so horrible in my life -- just parts of human beings, flesh, lying in the road."
Unrest broke out in several areas as mobs of protesters torched buildings, trucks and shops, blocked roads and uprooted rail tracks. Two people were shot dead in rioting in the eastern city of Lahore and two were killed in southern Sindh province.
President Pervez Musharraf, who announced three days of national mourning, urged people to remain peaceful "so that the evil designs of terrorists can be defeated," state television reported.
The interior ministry said police and paramilitary forces across Pakistan had been placed on the highest "red alert" level.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but Bhutto had in the past accused elements in the intelligence services of trying to kill her.
She also said she had received death threats from Islamic militant groups, including Al-Qaeda.
Police officials said Bhutto succumbed to her injuries in hospital, but it was not immediately known if it was the gunshot wound that killed her.
"The attacker fired and then blew himself up," said one official, who asked not to be named.
"She was waving to the crowd from the sunroof of her car and then there was a blast," Bhutto spokesman Farhatullah Babar told state television.
The attack calls into question whether the election can be held safely and on schedule, and raises speculation whether Musharraf will re-impose emergency rule.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wluVIrR-jw4&feature=user

Japan to drop humpback whale hunt

By Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) - Japan is dropping its plan to kill humpback whales in the seas off Antarctica, the country's top government spokesman said Friday.

Japan decided to suspend humpback hunts at the request of the United States, which is currently chair of the International Whaling Commission, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura.

"The government has decided to suspend hunts of humpback whales while talks to normalize IWC is taking place," Machimura said.

"But there will no changes to our stance on our research whaling itself.""The U.S. asked Japan to freeze planned humpback hunts" for one to two years to support its effort as the chairman to normalize the IWC, Machimura said.

Japan argues that the IWC has become a place for emotional fights rather the setting for calm discussion, and has called for "normalizing" reforms that would return it to that function.

Japan dispatched its whaling fleet last month to the southern Pacific in the first major hunt of humpback whales since the 1960s, generating widespread criticism.

Commercial hunts of humpbacks have been banned worldwide since 1966.

Earlier Friday, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura told reporters he hoped to discuss the whale hunt and related issues with his Australian counterpart soon.

"Given that in a sense this seems to be a problem of differences in national sentiment between Japanese and Australian culture, it's not a matter that can be solved by appealing to one another through logic," Komura told reporters.

"I hope to discuss possible measures with the Australian foreign minister soon."

Australia announced this week it was launching a new push to stop Japan's annual whale hunt, including sending surveillance planes and a ship to gather evidence for a possible international legal challenge.

On Wednesday, Thomas Schieffer, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, said a deal may have been struck to suspend Japan's plans to hunt 50 humpback whales in Antarctic waters.

The mission also aims to take as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales in what Japan's Fisheries Agency says is its largest-ever scientific whale hunt.

Critics say the program is a shield for Japan to keep its whaling industry alive until it can overturn a 1986 ban on commercial whaling.

Karli Thomas, who is leading a Greenpeace expedition heading to the southern Pacific, lauded the development.

"This is good news indeed, but it must be the first step towards ending all whaling in the Southern Ocean, not just one species for one season," Thomas said in a statement from on board the group's ship, Esperanza.

Uranium traces found on North Korean tubes

Published: Friday, December 21, 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. scientists found traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing from North Korea, which appears to contradict its denials of a secret uranium-based nuclear program, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
U.S. officials were concerned that disclosing the finding of the uranium traces on tubing samples provided by North Korea would further complicate diplomacy with the secretive country, the Post said, citing U.S. and diplomatic sources.
While acknowledging its plutonium-based weapons program, North Korea has persistently denied U.S. allegations that it had engaged in inappropriate uranium-based activities.

Washington is trying to get North Korea to disclose details of all its nuclear programs, and Pyongyang has promised to make a declaration by December 31 as part of a wider deal to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits from the United States and others.
U.S. negotiators will be forced to demand a detailed explanation about use of the tubes from Pyongyang, which has maintained it acquired thousands of them for conventional uses, the Post said, citing unnamed sources.
Washington has said the tubes were evidence that North Korea had a clandestine uranium weapons program because they could be used as outer casings for centrifuges needed to process uranium gas into weapons fuel.
The State Department and a spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment on the uranium finding, the Post said.
While the tubes could have picked up uranium traces from an active enrichment program, the traces also could have come from exposure to other equipment or people exposed to both sets of equipment, the Post said, citing a former U.N. weapons inspector.
For example, the Post said, Pakistan has acknowledged providing North Korea with a sample centrifuge kit so the tubes could have picked up enriched uranium from Pakistani equipment.
(Written by World Desk, Americas; Editing by Roger Crabb)
© Reuters 2007