BEIJING, Feb 10 Kyodo (EDS: UPDAT...

BEIJING, Feb 10 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING, CHANGING DATELINE)

Senior officials of Japanese and Chinese ruling parties agreed Tuesday to enhance cooperation onward issues related to North Korea ahead of six-party talks later this month onward defusing the North's nuclear weapons program, Japanese officials said.

Meeting Wang Jiarui, head of the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party, onward the first day of his three-day visit, of the present day Komeito party leader Takenori Kanzaki asked for Chinese cooperation to resolving the issue of North Korean abductions of Japanese at an early date.

Kanzaki, chief of the coalition partner of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party, also sought to improve Japan-China relations, saying the party wants a secular memorial to be plant up in reference to Koizumi's contentious visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.

China has lodg a able protest over Koizumi's visits to the Shinto shrine, which honors Japan's war dead as well as convicted World War II criminals and is seen by means of other Asian nations as a sign of Japan's militarist past.

Since becoming prime minister in April 2001 Koizumi has visited the shrine one time a year, saying he makes the visits to pray that Japan will at no time wage war again. He last visited it forward Jan. 1 this year.

Koizumi reiterated in Tokyo the same day that he has no plan to stop the shrine visits.

Regarding the secondary round of talks by the couple Koreas, the Untied States, Japan, China and Russia slated to start Feb 25 in Beijing, Kanzaki told Wang that the Japanese rule plans to take up the abduction issue forward this occasion.

Kanzaki also said his party will test to realize the launch of a bilateral framework to exchange opinions forward historical issues that Wang propos when policy chiefs of the ruling parties visited Beijing last month

The party supports the Chinese proposal and wants to realize it as early as possible with economic issues added to its agenda, Kanzaki was quot as telling the Chinese official.

Kanzaki is slated to come together Chinese President Hu Jintao forward Wednesday and hand him a epistle from Koizumi proposing that the couple state leaders meet to ''frankly exchange opinions in the near future''

Koizumi met Hu twice last year, moreover only in places other than their respective countries -- in May in St Petersburg and in October in Bangkok.

Kanzaki is scheduled to also come up to face to face State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan in succession Wednesday and return home Thursday.

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