Koizumi to visit Yasukuni war shrine

TOKYO - In a step sure to outrage China and South Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was to pay homage on Monday at a shrine for war dead seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past militarism, Japan's private Jiji news agency reported.

Japan's relations with its Asian neighbours have already chilled because of Koizumi's annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, where war criminals convicted by a 1948 Allied tribunal are honoured along with the nation's 2.5 million war dead.

- REUTERS