Japan FM wants friendly ties with China
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-28 20:16

Koizumi's comments came after an opinion survey published on Wednesday in which two-thirds of Japanese who replied said they didn't trust China.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents to an opinion poll by the Nihon Keizai business daily said China couldn't be trusted, far outnumbering the 14 percent who said it could be trusted.

Koizumi and Chinese President Hu Jintao met in Jakarta on the sidelines of the Asia-Africa summit in Indonesia in April, pulling relations between the two Asian powers back from the brink.

But bilateral ties took another hit in October when Koizumi made his latest visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, where some war criminals are honored along with Japan's 2.5 million war dead, sparking angry protests from China and South Korea.

Resentment lingers in South Korea over Japan's harsh colonial rule of the Korean peninsula in 1910-1945.