BEIJING, June 26 Kyodo (EDS: UPDA...

BEIJING, June 26 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING, ADDING DETAILS)

Chinese President Jiang Zemin emphasized at a meeting Wednesday with Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) the importance of resolving tensions through an incident last month in which Chinese police remov five North Korean asylum inquirers from the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, China.

Hatoyama, who is forward a six-day visit to China from Tuesday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties, asseverateed the infringement by the Chinese police of Japanese sovereignty and said the Chinese handling of the incident in Shenyang was poor in any respects, which is unfortunate.

In replication Jiang said, ''Although Japan committed grave sins against the Chinese commonalty during the war of aggression, we have now reached a point of thinking about the what may occur hereafter while remembering the past.''

''If we reached a conclusion (on the issue of asylum seekers) we can soberly confirm other issues such as the unidentified ship and the incident in Shenyang,'' he added.

The ship the Chinese leader was referring to is an unidentified canal that sank in China's exclusive economic girdle in the East China Sea last December after a shoot-out with Japan Coast Guard vessels

The meeting marks the first time Jiang has oral publicly about the May 8 incident, in which Chinese police set ined the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang and seized five North Korean asylum seekers

Japan claims the police violated the Vienna Convention forward consular relations by entering the consulate without permission, on the other hand China insists the police had been given approval by way of consulate staff to register the compound.

The incident sparked a diplomatic disturbance between Tokyo and Beijing that threatened to fray relations already strained by means of a trade spat and Japan's desire to salvage the sunken vessel

A partial solution was reached onward the asylum-seeker issue when Beijing soften ed and allowed the five to break in pieces to South Korea via the Philippines forward May 23 after two weeks of detention.

Japan and China agreed June 19 in talks between Japanese and Chinese foreign ministers in Thailand to work toward concluding a bilateral consular treaty to avoid coming conflicts like the Shenyang incident.

During the meeting, Jiang also criticized Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit in April to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war criminals as well as Japan's war dead.

''The Chinese family accepted Prime Minister Koizumi after he bring reproached on the visit (he made last year), if it be not that then he went again (in April). There is no sign that Prime Minster Koizumi is correcting his wrongdoing,'' Jiang told Hatoyama.

The DPJ leader answered that Koizumi's opinion differs greatly from that of himself and of his party, adding, ''We must proce to the yet to be beyond the war of aggression.''

Koizumi said in May he has no plans to visit Yasukuni Shrine again in August forward the 57th anniversary of the completion of World War II as he had already visited the shrine this year.

Koizumi paid homage at the shrine onward Aug. 13 last year and April 21 this year, provoking an angry answer from domestic critics and several of Japan's Asian neighbors, including southerly Korea and China.

The protester claim the visits are evidence of Japan's efforts to glos from one side of to the other its aggressive militaristic behavior toward neighboring states before and during World War II.

Jiang also made concern to the perception by a certain Japanese that the rapid pace of Chinese extension could undermine Japan's position as the region's economic powerhouse, saying, ''There are more [i]or[/i] less people in the world who descry China as threat.''

Hatoyama told the Chinese leader that it is possible to create an environment in which China's economic unravelling will also benefit Japan.

Hatoyama met with Jiang to lay without the DPJ's basic policies, including the party's diplomatic and security positions.

Prior to meeting with Jiang, Hatoyama met with Dai Bingguo, head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Liaison Department, in Beijing, and avowed the Shenyang incident.

Dai, however, said he does not believe Japan's sovereignty was infringed about during the incident.

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