Clinton urges "cool heads" in China-Japan island dispute

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China and Japan on Thursday to let "cool heads" prevail in a festering dispute over a cluster of islands in the East China Sea that has soured ties between Asia's two largest economies.

Clinton met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on the sidelines of this week's U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York and said it was important to ratchet down tensions over the islands, known as the Diaoyu islands in China and the Senkaku Islands in Japan, a senior State Department official said.

"The secretary ... again urged that cooler heads prevail, that Japan and China engage in dialogue to calm the waters," the official told reporters.

"We believe that Japan and China have the resources, have the restraint, have the ability to work on this directly and take tensions down, and that is our message to both sides," the official said.

Yang, however, used a portion of China's annual address to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday night to forcefully restate Beijing's stance that the islands had belonged to China from ancient times and were seized in 1895 after Japan defeated the Qing Dynasty in a war.

The top Chinese diplomat also condemned the Japanese government's purchase of the islands from their private owner, earlier this month, a step that sparked protests across China and prompted Beijing to curb bilateral trade and tourism.

"The moves taken by Japan are totally illegal and invalid," Yang said of the purchase, which Tokyo says was done to dampen down the dispute by preventing the islands' use by Japanese activists.

"They can in no way change the historical fact that Japan stole the Diaoyudao and affiliated islands and that China has sovereignty over them," Yang told the General Assembly. Diayudao is what China calls the main island in the cluster.

He urged Tokyo to resolve the issue through negotiations.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement on Yang's meeting with Clinton quoted him as saying Japan "must abandon its illusions, face up to reality and earnestly correct its errors."

Clinton was due to meet Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba and South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan in a three-way meeting on Friday. Japan and South Korea, two close U.S. allies, have also seen their relationship rocked in recent months by maritime territorial disputes.

In hourlong talks on the sidelines of the United Nations on Tuesday, Japan's Gemba urged China to exercise restraint over the dispute. Japanese diplomats described the meeting as "tense," as Gemba endured a stern lecture from China's Yang.

The islands - located in waters thought to be rich in natural gas deposits - have been administered by Japan since 1895, but China has declared them "sacred territory," and Taiwan has also asserted its own sovereignty over the area.

ESCALATION RISK

Tokyo and Beijing have traded increasingly sharp words in the dispute, which has seen both countries send patrol boats in a game of cat-and-mouse in the waters near the disputed islands, raising concerns that an unintended collision or other incident could escalate into a broader clash.

The United States has said repeatedly it takes no position on the sovereignty dispute, but believes it is important for China and Japan to work out their differences peacefully.

In her meeting with Yang, Clinton also touched on territorial disputes in the South China Sea that have set Beijing against a number of its Southeast Asian neighbors, including the Philippines, a close U.S. ally.

China has resisted calls by the United States and some Southeast Asian countries to agree on a multilateral framework to settle the disputes, preferring to engage with each of the other less powerful claimants individually.

The U.S. official said Clinton welcomed moves by China to restart informal meetings with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, most recently in Cambodia two weeks ago, as a sign of progress.

"We expect these meetings are going to continue in the lead-up to the East Asia Summit in November," the official said. "This is precisely what the secretary has been advocating, that they restart a dialogue."

Clinton met later with a delegation of ASEAN ministers, who were guardedly upbeat about China's latest moves, a second U.S. official said.

"We are going to have to wait and see over the course of the next several weeks, but we have obviously encouraged the process to grow and deepen," the official told reporters.

Clinton and her Chinese counterpart also discussed North Korea, which remains locked in a dispute with the international community over its nuclear program, as well as the possible next steps as the world's major powers confront Tehran over its own nuclear ambitions, the official said.

Clinton also raised the issue of Syria, where China has joined Russia in blocking U.S.-led moves within the U.N. Security Council to take tough measures against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as his government engages in a bloody struggle against armed rebels.

(Additional reporting By Paul Eckert; Editing by Todd Eastham and Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-urges-cool-heads-china-japan-island-dispute-000112874.html

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