Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono proposed to China on Sunday resuming reciprocal visits by the two countries’ leaders, with bilateral relations showing signs of improvement despite a lingering territorial dispute. At the outset of his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which was open to the media, Kono said<\/b>
\nJapanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono proposed to China on Sunday resuming reciprocal visits by the two countries’ leaders, with bilateral relations showing signs of improvement despite a lingering territorial dispute.
At the outset of his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which was open to the media, Kono said, \u00ab\u00a0We want to improve overall (bilateral) ties this year,\u00a0\u00bb including reciprocal visits by the leaders.
Kono, the first Japanese foreign minister to visit China in about two years, noted the importance of this year as Tokyo and Beijing mark the 40th anniversary of the signing of a peace and friendship treaty.
Wang responded to Kono by saying China welcomes Japan’s \u00ab\u00a0strong determination\u00a0\u00bb to improve bilateral relations.
Later in the day, Kono, who arrived in Beijing on Saturday, is scheduled to meet Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi, the nation’s top diplomat, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping have yet to exchange official visits due in part to the row over the Tokyo-controlled Senkaku Islands, a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea that Beijing claims.
During the meetings in Beijing, Kono is also aiming to make arrangements with China to hold as soon as possible a trilateral summit also involving South Korea, which Tokyo wanted to host last year, the official said.
In addition, North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear ambitions are likely to be on the agenda, as Japan has asked China to exercise leverage over Pyongyang and play a key role in realizing denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Kono is visiting China for the first time as foreign minister and his trip is the first by a Japanese foreign minister since his predecessor Fumio Kishida visited in April 2016.
Meanwhile, Kono may lodge a protest over the entry of a submerged Chinese submarine into the contiguous zone around Japanese territorial waters near the Senkakus earlier this month.
Tokyo and Beijing have been mired in a territorial row over the Senkakus, called Diaoyu in China, for years. The dispute escalated particularly after the Japanese government led by then Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda, Abe’s predecessor, decided to effectively put them under state control in September 2012.
Bilateral relations, however, appear to be improving after both Abe and Xi bolstered their domestic power bases late last year.
South Korea was the previous host of the trilateral summit in 2015. Tokyo is due to host the next one, but a plan to hold it in 2016 was dropped against a backdrop of political turmoil in South Korea.
The three countries have been rotating summit-hosting duties since 2008, although the gatherings were not held in 2013 and 2014 after a chill in Japan-China relations over the territorial row.
The summit would bring Li to Japan for the first time since he became premier in 2013.
Kono is slated to return to Tokyo early Monday.<\/p>\n