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Aso hints Japan's ties with China, S. Korea may not improve soon+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, Feb. 19_(Kyodo) _ Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso suggested Sunday that Japan's soured ties with China and South Korea may not be improved for some time, saying neighboring countries should not be expected to be friendly all the time. "We should be prepared to a certain degree and not expect too much that neighbors should always be on good terms," Aso said on an NHK program in light of the fact that Japan has not been able to hold summit talks with China and South Korea due to the strained relations. Claiming the relationship between Britain and France to be an example, Aso said, "I think it is difficult for a small island nation situated next to a big country to avoid constantly being in a tense situation." But the foreign minister also emphasized that Japan's relations with China and South Korea are flourishing on the private-sector level, with people and economic exchanges being "deeper than ever" at the present time. On China's repeated demands for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to stop visiting the war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Aso said solving that issue would not necessarily lead to the resolution of all outstanding bilateral issues. "If our economic strengths become antagonistic, bilateral ties will not be stable. It is not because of Yasukuni, but our future strategies and the motives of Japan and China overlapping each other are making things difficult," Aso said. As victims of Japanese atrocities before and during World War II, China and South Korea have protested at Koizumi's repeated visits to the Shinto shrine, where Class-A war criminals from World War II as well as Japan's war dead are honored. The two countries have refused bilateral and trilateral summit talks with Koizumi since last October, when he made the latest of his annual visits to Yasukuni since becoming prime minister. |