Beijing -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will pay an official visit to China from October 8 to 9, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao announced on Wednesday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) is escorted by guards as he arrives at the Upper House plenary session at the parliament in Tokyo October 4, 2006. The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will pay an official visit to China from October 8 to 9. [Reuters]

 
"China and Japan reached a consensus on overcoming the political obstacle to the bilateral relationship and promoting the sound development of bilateral friendly and cooperative relationship," Liu said.

"Accordingly, at the invitation of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will pay an official visit to China from October 8 to 9," the spokesman said.

The Sino-Japanese relations have been soured by former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan's war dead, including 14 class-A war criminals in WWII, are honored.

The leaders of the two countries halted exchange of visits since Koizumi paid a homage to the war shrine in 2001.

Chinese President Hu Jintao said last March in a meeting with the heads of seven Japan-China friendship organizations that the difficult situation in China-Japan relationship was not caused by the Chinese side or the Japanese people.

The sticking point is that the major obstacle in China-Japan relationship was Japanese leader's insistence on visiting the shrine, Hu said.

China always values its relationship with Japan, considering it one of the important bilateral relations in the world, he said. The Chinese side has made unswerving efforts to improve China-Japan relations.

The president said the China's stance on its relationship with Japan is "clear", "consistent" and "unswerving."

China will, as it always does, handle China-Japan relationship from a strategic and long-term point of view and is committed to China-Japan peaceful coexistence, long-term friendship, mutually beneficial cooperation and common development, he said.

The Chinese side will abide by the principles set in the three Sino-Japanese political documents, continue to "take history as a mirror and look into the future," and properly settle the problems between the two sides through equal consultations, and maintain China-Japan friendship, said Hu.

Abe won a landslide victory in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election on September 20, and was elected new Prime Minister on September 26.

He has pledged to improve relations with Japan's Asian neighbors, but refused to say whether or not he would visit the shrine as prime minister.

Abe said Monday that on the view of Japan's wartime history, he will follow the 1995 statement made by the then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama who apologized and expressed remorse for Japan's colonial rule and atrocities before and during the war.

Abe also said that Japan had accepted the results of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East that convicted 14 Japanese wartime leaders as war criminals.