Hu, Koizumi holds talks to salvage ties

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (R) poses with local students Saturday during his visit to Banda Aceh city which was hit by last December's tsunami. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi is in Indonesia to attend the Asia-Africa Summit 2005 in Jakarta. PHOTO: AFP

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Friday issued Japan's most public apology in a decade for its wartime aggression.

The two leaders met at a hotel in the centre of the Indonesian capital after an Asia-Africa summit and shook hands before ushering journalists out of the room to begin a closed-door meeting, expected to last 40 minutes.

In the exchange of pleasantries Koizumi smiled and mentioned his morning trip to the Indonesia province of Aceh, devastated by the December 26 tsunami.

"This morning we were at the scene of the tsunami, we saw a miserable state," Koizumi said.

Responding, without smiling, Hu said he felt sorry for the Indonesian people who had lost their relatives in the disaster.

"I'm confident that Indonesian people will overcome this difficulty," the Chinese leader said, adding: "China will make the greatest effort to provide assistance to them."

China and Japan have been locked for weeks in a bitter row sparked by Tokyo's approval of a history textbook which Beijing says glosses over past atrocities committed by the Japanese military.

Tensions have boiled over onto the streets of several Chinese cities with thousands turning out at weekend rallies shouting anti-Japanese slogans and angrily denouncing Japan's war record.

Protestors have also expressed violent opposition to Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and anger at Koizumi's visits to a controversial shrine for the war dead.

China has refused Japan's demands to apologise for the protests, instead saying that Tokyo's refusal to admit its dark past has placed Sino-Japanese relations at their lowest ebb for 30 years.

Koizumi on Friday made Japan's most public apology in a decade for the wartime suffering it had caused Asian nations.

"In the past, Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations," Koizumi told the Asia-Africa summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao looking on.

"Japan squarely faces these facts of history in a spirit of humility. And with feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology always engraved in mind, Japan has resolutely maintained, consistently since the end of World War II, never turning into a military power but an economic power," he said.