China newspaper blames 'hawkish' Maehara for canceled top meeting

BEIJING (Kyodo) -- Japan's "hawkish" Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara is to be blamed for the cancellation of planned talks between the premiers of China and Japan last week on the sidelines of regional meetings in Hanoi, a state-run Chinese newspaper said Monday.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan "has chosen the wrong guy to represent Japan in international relations," said an editorial in the Global Times, a newspaper published by the People's Daily under the Chinese Communist Party.

Criticizing Maehara as a "political extremist" who was "wholesaling his strong rhetoric" at last week's meetings in Hanoi hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the editorial said. "It may be better to call Maehara a defense minister rather than a foreign minister."

China on Friday called off talks between Premier Wen Jiabao and Kan, saying "untrue statements" made during a meeting between Maehara and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi earlier in the day had ruined the atmosphere for what could have been a fence-mending meeting.

Relations between the two countries have plummeted to their lowest level in recent years following collisions between a Chinese trawler and Japanese Coast Guard vessels near disputed islands in the East China Sea in early September.

"If the initial conflict was only an unexpected 'accident,' the situation now has evolved into a major territorial dispute between the two countries," the editorial said. "Maehara's right-wing comments have reduced Japan's diplomatic flexibility to zero."

The piece also slammed Maehara's earlier remarks in which he described China's angry reaction in the aftermath of the collisions as "hysterical."

"His words were the most offensive by a Japanese government official in the past decade or two," the editorial said.

"China's rise is inevitable," it continued. 'He (Maehara) should not try to push his country to confront this trend, which will be unbearable for Japan."

The Japan-China summit was initially expected to take place Friday evening.

After the cancellation of the Wen-Kan talks, Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama told reporters that the Japanese government was "extremely surprised" at China's decision and unsure of China's intent.

Wen and Kan eventually held informal talks for about 10 minutes on Saturday morning while waiting for an East Asian leaders summit and Kan expressed his hope of meeting Chinese President Hu Jintao in Japan when he chairs the next summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in mid-November.

(Mainichi Japan) November 1, 2010