Annan urges China and Japan to resolve differences

UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has encouraged Chinese and Japanese leaders to meet at the forthcoming Asia-Africa summit in Indonesia and resolve their differences peacefully.

Annan, who will be attending the Jakarta summit, which begins on Thursday, said he hoped Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Chinese President Hu Jintao would talks.

"I would encourage them to do that," Annan told reporters.

Sino-Japanese relations are at their worst in decades following a third weekend of anti-Japanese protests in China. Many Chinese are furious at a revised Japanese school textbook they say whitewashes atrocities during Japan's 1931-45 occupation of China.

Relations with China chilled after Koizumi took office in 2001 and began visiting Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are honored with Japan's approximately 2.5 million war dead.

Chinese are also protesting Japan's quest for a permanent Security Council seat.

Annan has been pushing expansion of the Security Council as part of his sweeping plans to overhaul the United Nations.

"They have lots of relationships, on all fronts -- political, economic and social -- and I hope those important aspects of their relationship will encourage them to resolve their differences," Annan said.

More than 100 countries have been invited to the Asia-Africa leaders' meeting on April 22-23 in Jakarta, and on a nostalgic trip to Bandung on April 24, a city in West Java province where the original conference was held in 1955.

Bandung gave rise to the Nonaligned Movement of nations that attempted to form a third world force that would not side with the United States nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Yugoslavia, India and Indonesia were instrumental in founding the movement in 1961, which now seeks to formulate UN policies.

- REUTERS