Japan 'ruined' Wen, Kan meeting: China

Wen and Kan are both in Hanoi to attend the East Asia summit, and there were talks that the two leaders would meet. The “long-awaited” summit meeting between Beijing and Tokyo failed to take place on Friday as a result of the Japanese attempts to “ruin the atmosphere,” Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue said.

He accused Japan of violating China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by making statements misrepresenting some of the contents of the talks held in Hanoi on Friday between Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and his Japanese counterpart Seiji Maehara. “Japanese comments torpedo meeting” read the headline of the state-run China Daily here on Saturday.

China was especially livid with Japanese claims that it was agreed during the meeting to resume negotiation on the exploration of oil and gas fields in East China Sea, which were put off by Beijing last month after the detention of the skipper of a Chinese fishing trawler off the disputed Diaoyu islands.

Yang and Maehara held a half-hour meeting on the sidelines of a series of summits between the Asean and its partners in the Vietnamese capital on Friday.

“The Japanese should take full responsibility for the consequences,” Hu told the Chinese media. The Japanese also made false statements about the content of a meeting between Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers and misrepresented China’s stance on implementing the consensus on the East China Sea, he said.