China to Hold Summit with Japan in Hanoi: Official

Beijing, Oct. 13 (Jiji Press)--China will hold a summit meeting
with Japan on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations-related meetings in Hanoi later this month, senior Chinese diplomat
Wu Dawei said Wednesday.
Wu, China's special representative on the Korean Peninsula affairs,
told this to reporters after meeting with Akitaka Saiki, director-general of
the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.
In Tokyo, diplomatic sources confirmed that Tokyo and Beijing
basically agreed to hold an official meeting between Japanese Prime Minister
Naoto Kan and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in the Vietnamese capital on the
occasion of conferences including the ASEAN summit.
Saiki was visiting here to meet with senior Chinese Foreign
Ministry officials to discuss how to mend the bilateral ties strained over a
maritime incident that happened near the disputed islands of Senkaku, called
Diaoyu in China, in the East China Sea last month.
Other main issues are believed to have included the North Korean
situation.
Saiki was accompanied by Hideo Tarumi, director of the bureau's
China and Mongolia Division.
Japan and China are moving to normalize their ties since Kan and
Wen Jiabao in their informal talks last week confirmed the need to develop
their mutually beneficial strategic ties.
But it will take some more time for the two nations to fully repair
their relations, particularly in the military field, in which exchange and
other bilateral programs are still suspended, people familiar with the
matter said.
In his meeting with Wu, Saiki exchanged views on preparations for
possible resumption of six-way talks aimed at scrapping North Korea's
nuclear programs. Wu met with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye
Gwan on Tuesday.