China said Monday it was open to a visit by Japan's foreign minister to mend relations but insisted that Japan's premier should stop visiting a controversial war shrine.
The remarks come amid speculation that outgoing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will visit the Yasukuni war shrine next week on the sensitive August 15 anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender.
"It is fully possible to hold talks in Beijing," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said on a visit to Tokyo. "Wherever such a meeting is held, relations between China and Japan must be promoted."
Chinese President Hu Jintao has refused to meet Koizumi because of his repeated pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine, widely seen in Asia as a symbol of Japanese militarism as it enshrines the dead from World War II including war criminals.
But the foreign ministers have met twice this year.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso and his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing held talks in Doha in May — their first meeting in more than a year — and in Kuala Lumpur last month, both times on the sidelines of conferences.
Kyodo News has reported that the two countries are arranging for Aso to visit Beijing in late August.
Koizumi will step down in late September and Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the front-runner to succeed as prime minister, was reported last week to have secretly visited the Shinto sanctuary last April.
"We are deeply concerned," Liu, the Chinese foreign minstry spokesman, told the news conference about Abe's reported pilgrimage to Yasukuni.
"If top Japanese leaders immediately halt the visits and deal with matters with correct historical perceptions, it will conform to interests of the two peoples," Liu said.
"We hope that (Japan's) next prime minister will make efforts to improve relations and we will greatly welcome such efforts," the spokesman added.
Both Koizumi and Abe say they visit Yasukuni to pray for the repose of the war dead in general and vow not to fight a war again.
