TOKYO: Japan and the United States are dropping plans for a joint drill to simulate the retaking of a remote island from foreign forces amid a row between Tokyo and Beijing over a disputed archipelago, a report said.

The governments are set to cancel the drill as it could provoke further anger from China after a row escalated when Japan last month nationalized some of the disputed islands, also claimed by Beijing, Jiji Press reported on Friday.

The decision to cancel the drill, which would have involved an island that is not part of the disputed chain, was in line with the views of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s office, the news agency quoted government sources as saying.

No official was immediately available for comment at the Japanese defense ministry.

According to earlier Japanese news reports, the exercise would have been part of broader joint Japan-US maneuvers due to start in early November.

The drill would have used an uninhabited island, Irisunajima, near the main Okinawan island in southern Japan, and would have seen Japanese and US troops make an amphibious and airborne landing, the reports said.

Like the disputed islands, tiny Irisunajima is also in the East China Sea but hundreds of kilometers away from the archipelago at the center of the row between China and Japan.

Japan and China have long been at loggerheads over the sovereignty of the rocky outcrops known as the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyus in China. The Tokyo-administered island chain is uninhabited, but the seabed below them is thought to contain valuable natural resources, such as oil.

On Saturday, five Chinese government ships were seen sailing close to Tokyo-controlled islands in the East China Sea, prodding Japanese patrol boats to chase them away from the disputed chain.

It was the first time in 10 days that state-owned Chinese ships were spotted near the islands as bad weather had prevailed due to a powerful typhoon passing through.

Japan’s coastguard said that its patrol boats were warning the Chinese vessels “not to violate territorial waters” and keeping them under surveillance off the island chain, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Despite the warnings, one of the surveillance ships responded by radio in Chinese, “This ocean area is integral part of China and we are carrying out legitimate operations,” according to a coastguard official.

Such vessels have been spotted loitering in waters off the islands as the dispute has escalated over the last two months, with boats at times entering a 12-nautical mile territorial zone.

Tensions peaked in mid-September after Tokyo nationalized a number of the islands.

The coastguard said it had spotted four Chinese maritime surveillance vessels sailing 24km to 35km off Uotsurijima—the largest island in the chain—in the morning.

It added that a Chinese fisheries patrol boat was also spotted about 42km off another island, Kubajima.

The five ships were located within the so-called 44-kilometer “contiguous zone” where the coastal state may exercise the controls necessary to prevent and punish infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea.