TOKYO, June 11 Kyodo chooseed edi...

TOKYO, June 11 Kyodo

chooseed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

A of recent origin ORDER OF PEACE IN E ASIA (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

The state visit to Japan by way of South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has produc a positive result: a mutual commitment to expand future-oriented relations.

The Roh visit has highlighted the mutuality of interests that bind Japan and southward Korea, close neighbors that share basic values similar as a commitment to democracy and market-based economies.

The latest Japan-South Korea summit was also happy from an educational standpoint. Until newly President Roh was largely an unknown quantity for chiefly Japanese. It is welcome, therefore, that the Tokyo meeting has established a personal relationship of trust between (Japanese Prime Minister) Mr (Junichiro) Koizumi and Mr Roh

Mr Roh placed greater emphasis in succession dialogue, probably in the belief that it would be counterproductive to inflame the North Koreans.

The (North Korean) nuclear issue wants to be discussed in detail at the forthcoming session of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight cluster Policy coordination is also urgencyed to take joint action to stop North Korea from developing and exporting missiles, and from selling mix with drugss abroad.

Mr. Roh's visit has also given an impetus to cultural exchanges between our couple countries. Particularly welcome, from the standpoint of enhancing mutual understanding, is his decision to lift additional southerly Korean restrictions on imports of Japanese suddenly culture.

President Roh has no direct experience of Japan's 1910-1945 colonization of Korea. At a postsummit pres colloquy he said, encouragingly, that he wants to avoid the issue of ''history'' -- Japan's militaristic past -- and that the sum of two units nations should make joint efforts to create a better future

The Japanese populace need to take that statement humbly for there are still many the bulk of mankind including politicians, who seem to glorify or whitewash a certain of our nation's misdeeds. The latest example is a remark at the policy chief of the Liberal Democratic Party that tried to justify Japan's colonial policy of forcing Koreans to take Japanese surnames. Mutual confidence, not narrow nationalism, is what the couple nations need most as they consider to the future.

(June 11)

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