Posted on 09/21/2013 7:50:53 PM PDT by TexGrill
China said on Friday that it was ready to talk to Japan over an increasingly heated maritime row, but only if Tokyo declares the islands involved to be disputed.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) faced questions about ties with the US ally during a visit to Washington, where he called for mutual respect in relations between the US and a growing China.
Wang laid blame for tensions on Japan, which in September last year nationalized three of the islands, known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in Taiwan, which also claims them, as the Senkakus in Japan and as the Diaoyus (釣魚嶼) in China.
“In spite of this, we are still ready to sit down and have a dialogue with the Japanese to work out jointly a way to manage the current situation,” Wang said at the Brookings Institution.
“But first, Japan needs to recognize that there is such a dispute. The whole world knows that there is a dispute,” he added. “I believe there will be a day when the Japanese come back to the table of dialogue.”
Japan contends that China has no historical basis to claim the islands and charges that Beijing is trying to challenge Tokyo’s rule through military intimidation.
Japan’s coast guard reported on Thursday that two Chinese ships entered waters near the islands, in the latest such incursion in the potentially energy-rich area.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, meeting briefly this month with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Russia, called for an improvement in relations between Asia’s two largest economies.
However, the conservative prime minister has also pledged a firm line on defending sovereignty and has moved to step up officially pacifist Japan’s defense spending and cooperation with the US.
(Excerpt) Read more at taipeitimes.com ...
Uh... NO! How does that work for you, China?
NO!!!!
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