Justin McCurry in Tokyo, and agencies
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea<\/a> will hold three-way talks \u201cas soon as possible\u201d after a meeting intended to ease Chinese concerns over Washington\u2019s stronger security presence in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Official said on Tuesday that the three countries\u2019 deputy foreign ministers had agreed to revive trilateral talks after a four-year hiatus during which tensions have risen over North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons programme and Chinese military activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lim Soo-suk, a spokesperson for South Korea\u2019s foreign ministry, said the leaders\u2019 summit would be held at the \u201cearliest mutually convenient time\u201d, according to the Yonhap news agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Japan\u2019s foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, said the three countries shared the need to restart high-level talks, including summits, \u201cas soon as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI believe it is very valuable to discuss the various challenges the region faces,\u201d she told a briefing in Tokyo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China<\/a> has expressed alarm over deepening ties between Washington and its two allies in north-east Asia, which are home to tens of thousands of US troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In August, South Korea\u2019s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and the US president, Joe Biden, hailed a \u201cnew chapter\u201d in three-way security cooperation after a historical summit at Camp David.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China denounced the summit, saying it \u201copposes relevant countries forming various cliques and their practices of exacerbating confrontation and jeopardising other countries\u2019 strategic security\u201d. It was particularly angered by a reference in the Camp David statement to China\u2019s \u201caggressive behaviour\u201d in the South China<\/a> Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Washington has attempted to present a united regional front against Chinese military activity near Taiwan<\/a> and North Korea\u2019s development of powerful weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China\u2019s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said on Tuesday that Beijing would oppose the \u201cwanton expansion of military alliances and the squeezing of the security space of other countries\u201d, in what appeared to be a warning against any attempt to establish a Nato-like military alliance in the Asia-Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Forces from Japan,\u00a0South Korea<\/a>\u00a0and the US have held joint military exercises in response to the threat from\u00a0North Korea<\/a>, while China \u2013 North Korea\u2019s biggest aid donor and trading partner \u2013 has recently sent senior officials to attend military parades in Pyongyang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Japan and South Korea have an interest in maintaining a stable security relationship with China, including its help addressing North Korea\u2019s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, according to Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese shared interests open up new avenues for strategic communication, confidence-building, and measures to prevent crises,\u201d Zhao said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The prospects for a revival of formal talks between the leaders of China, Japan<\/a> and South Korea have risen following a recent thaw in ties<\/a> between Tokyo and Seoul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yoon and his fellow conservative Kishida appear to have settled long-running rows over how much responsibility Japan should bear for its actions on the Korean peninsula before and during the second world war, including its use of \u201ccomfort women<\/a>\u201d and forced labour<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n South Korea\u2019s foreign ministry said cooperation between the three neighbours was essential to the \u201cpeace, stability, and prosperity of the world\u201d, adding that together they accounted for 20% of the world\u2019s population and a quarter of the world\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In similarly conciliatory tones, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said China, Japan and South Korea had a common interest in improving bilateral ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe should work together to strengthen practical cooperation \u2026 and make new contributions to regional peace, stability, and prosperity,\u201d Wang said on Tuesday. Justin McCurry in Tokyo, and agencies The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea will hold three-way talks \u201cas soon as possible\u201d after a meeting intended to ease Chinese concerns over Washington\u2019s stronger security presence in the region. Official said on Tuesday that the three countries\u2019 deputy foreign ministers had agreed to revive trilateral talks after a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":7499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,218,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asian-issues","category-reports-and-articles","category-172"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7501,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7498\/revisions\/7501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
(Source: The Guardian)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"