China accused Japan of a “severe infringement” on its sovereignty in tense talks at the United Nations between their foreign ministers over a bitter territorial row, Beijing said Wednesday.
China said Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi also told his counterpart Koichiro Gemba in New York on Tuesday that ties between the Asian powers would remain strained until Tokyo reverses its purchase of disputed East China Sea islands.
The Chinese comments in the apparently heated discussions on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly were detailed in a statement issued in Beijing by the foreign ministry.
“The Chinese side will by no means tolerate any unilateral action by the Japanese side on the Diaoyu Islands,” Yang told Gemba, according to the statement.
China and Japan are locked in an escalating confrontation over the Diaoyu islands — known as Senkaku in Japan — that triggered street protests across China and saw attacks on Japanese businesses.
The two sides have long wrangled over the islands, but relations plummeted to their lowest ebb in years after Tokyo announced on September 11 that it had completed a deal to buy three of the uninhabited outcrops from their private owner.
Commentators said the move was an apparent bid to outmanoeuvre the hawkish governor of Tokyo, who wanted to buy and develop the islands.
A senior Japanese official said Gemba, responding to Yang, called for “the maximum careful restraint from the Chinese side because of the recent damage to Japanese businesses and affiliates in China”.
“He insisted violence cannot be tolerated,” the official said.
Gemba had requested the meeting, the official said.
Yang had told Gemba that blame for the flare-up was all with the Japanese side and repeated earlier Chinese government calls for Japan to “correct its error (and) cease all actions which affect China’s territorial sovereignty”.
“Only by doing this can bilateral relations return to a healthy and stable development.”
Yang said Japan’s claims over the islands represented a “denial” of the outcome of the “anti-fascist war” — a reference to Chinese resistance to a bloody Japanese World War II invasion of China.
Diplomats at the UN told AFP that the pair failed to reach a breakthrough in their talks, but both the Chinese foreign ministry and a Japanese official confirmed that the talks would continue.
“Although the atmosphere was a bit severe, the Chinese side laid out its own case and the ministers agreed to continue the dialogue,” a Japanese official told AFP.
The Chinese foreign ministry statement also said consultations would continue.
Their talk was the highest-level meeting between the two sides since the government purchase of the islands earlier this month.
Vice ministers from the two countries met in Beijing on Tuesday but also failed to ease the diplomatic tensions.
Chinese government ships have sailed into waters around the disputed islands in recent days, but there was no sign of them in the area early Wednesday, according to Japanese coastguards.