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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao offered Japan the hand of
friendship Thursday in a call to put aside bitter memories of the
past that have hobbled relations between the two Asian giants.
In the first address for 22 years
by a Chinese leader to the parliament in Tokyo, Wen urged Japan not
to forget its past but acknowledged its people had also been the
victims of war.
Earlier, he took his
fence-mending visit to Japan to the streets, going for a jog around
a Tokyo park and chatting with members of the public.
In parliament, the flags of the
two countries mounted on the podium behind, Wen called on the two
powers to look to the future.
“The Chinese public must foster
friendship with Japanese people,” he said, and laid the blame for
Japan’s invasion and 1931-45 occupation of China—a running sore
for many Chinese—on a “limited number” of wartime leaders.
“As the Chinese leaders of the
past generations have said, the responsibility for the war of
aggression should rest with a limited number of militarists.”
“The general Japanese public
were also victims of the war,” added Wen, who is making the first
visit here by a Chinese leader in seven years.
Relations between Asia’s two
largest economies were badly strained during the 2001-06 premiership
of Japan’s Junichiro Koizumi, who repeatedly visited a war shrine
that Beijing and Seoul associate with imperialism.
Just days after Koizumi left
office, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—who made his career as a
hardliner on emotive history issues—traveled to Beijing in
October.
Wen, who met Abe on Wednesday for
dinner of sushi and Japanese beef, said that while the Japanese
premier’s visit to Beijing broke the ice, he aimed to “melt”
the ice with this trip to Tokyo.
Wen also called for the two
countries to peacefully resolve one of their most intractable
rows—a dispute over gas fields in the East China Sea. But China
quickly reiterated there was no change in its territorial claims.
And in a possible warning to Abe
not to visit the Yasukuni shrine, Wen said he expected Japan to
continue to show regret for the past.
“Japanese leaders have
expressed their views on history time and time again. They admitted
the invasion and expressed their deep regret and apologies to the
countries that fell victim,” he said.
“The Chinese government and the
public appreciate that profoundly. We hope Japan will turn the
expression into action as promised.”
Earlier, wearing black sportswear
bearing the logos of next year’s Beijing Olympics, the 64-year-old
Wen jogged around a Tokyo park, chatted with members of the public
and showed off a few tai chi moves.
“What do you do for a
living?” Wen asked one woman through a translator, as security
guards looked on.
“I am a barber,” she replied
in Japanese.
“I am Wen Jiabao,” he said.
Wen later had an audience with
Emperor Akihito, whose father Hirohito was revered as a demigod
during World War II, and thanked him for calling on Japan to think
“appropriately” about history, the palace said.
Despite tensions over their past,
China and Japan have become increasingly economically interlinked,
with Japan counting on its giant neighbor as a vital source both for
workers and middle-class consumers.
Takehiko Yamamoto, a professor of
international politics at Tokyo’s Waseda University, said Wen’s
visit showed the two countries saw mutual interests in improving
ties.
--AFP
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