Japan asks Chinese heads to visit

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Japan has formally invited China's top leaders to visit the country next spring, Tokyo's foreign minister says.

Taro Aso said Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao were welcome to visit the country.

Beijing has not given an official response to the invitation, which came after talks between both countries' foreign ministers in the Philippines.

Japan's new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has tried to mend ties strained by a row over wartime history.

His predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, angered China and South Korea with his regular visits to the Yasukuni shrine honouring Japan's wartime dead.

Both countries were occupied by Japan during the war and felt the shrine visits were a tacit tribute to Japan's imperial ambitions.

North Korea talks

The meeting between China and Japan's foreign ministers took place in the Philippines, where the annual Asean summit of East Asian leaders, due to have begun on Monday, has been postponed because of an approaching storm.

"I again extended an invitation to Chinese leaders to visit Japan in the coming spring, and we were told the date has yet to be set," Mr Aso said.

A Japanese foreign ministry spokesman said Beijing had welcomed the invitation but had yet to give an official response to it.

"Both welcomed improving relations," Mitsuo Sakaba told the Reuters news agency.

He said the two countries had agreed to send experts to discuss diverging views of World War II to a meeting in late December.

The foreign ministers also said they supported the early resumption of six-party talks to ease a stalemate over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

Japan and China also agreed to work towards solving a dispute over natural gas exploration rights in the East China Sea.