China and Japan will hold a summit on the sidelines of the Southeast Asian forum in Hanoi, reports said Thursday, as the two sides work to repair ties after a bitter territorial spat.
Senior diplomats on Wednesday agreed Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao would meet in the Vietnamese capital later this month, the Yomiuri Shimbun and Nikkei dailies reported.
Akitaka Saiki, chief of Asia-Pacific issues at Japan's foreign ministry and Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei, special representative on the Korean peninsula, met in Beijing and agreed on the talks, the papers said.
The report came as the two sides look to get their relationship back on track after the worst diplomatic row in recent years.
China broke off all high-level contact with Tokyo last month after Japan detained a Chinese fishing boat captain whose vessel collided with Japanese coast guard patrol ships in waters claimed by both sides in the East China Sea.
The row between Asia's two biggest economies was their worst in years and undermined painstaking efforts of recent years to improve relations following decades of mistrust stemming from Japan's brutal 1930s invasion and occupation of China.
Japanese Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa and his Chinese counterpart Liang Guanglie met Monday for the first time since the row erupted, and agreed to set up a liaison system to try to avert future maritime confrontations.
Kan, who met Wen informally in Brussels last week, has said he agreed with Wen they would "resume high-level political exchanges" that were suspended following the incident.
Share This Article With Planet Earth
