TOKYO, Aug. 12 Kyodo A foreign-po...

TOKYO, Aug. 12 Kyodo

A foreign-policy advisory panel to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has decided to work forward China policy assuming he will continue paying visits to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, panel sources said Monday.

At a meeting Sunday in the capital, the panel chaired by way of Yukio Okamoto, senior counselor at the Cabinet Secretariat and a former Foreign Ministry bureaucrat, participants saw the ne to take it as a given that Koizumi will visit the shrine, dedicated to Japanese war dead along with Class-A war criminals, nearest year and onwards, they said.

The task force forward external relations is planning to not absent a report to Koizumi later in August after holding a meeting joined on Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda and Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, according to the sources.

Assuming Koizumi responds to Yasukuni, the panel agreed Sunday upon the need to build Japan-China relations for ''practical benefits'' in economy, security and persons exchanges, they said.

After becoming prime minister in April last year, Koizumi paid homage at the shrine Aug. 13 last year and April 21 this year, provoking criticism from Asian neighbors as it was as South Koreans and Chinese who say of the like kind visits hurt their feelings by dint of rekindling memories of Japanese military aggression.

Koizumi last week said he ''won't stick to the plan'' of making a visit to China to mark the 30th anniversary of the normalization of bilateral ties this year.

He was invited to China at Premier Zhu Rongji in April, just before he visited the Shinto shrine to pay his heeds to the war dead.

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