The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Qufu

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda called for closer cooperation with China on Sunday as he wrapped up a four-day visit in which the two sides pledged to build on a recent thaw in relations.

"This trip to China has been very meaningful," Fukuda told reporters after visiting a shrine in eastern China to the ancient philosopher Confucius.

"I have talked with Chinese leaders and agreed that Japan and China can do more if they cooperate than each can do single-handedly."

During his landmark visit, Fukuda held talks with Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao in Beijing on closer cooperation between the nations in trade, climate change and other fields, although they failed to close the gap in a stubborn dispute over maritime gas fields.

Fukuda, however, has accentuated the positive during his trip, his first to China since becoming prime minister in September and the latest step forward in a relationship marred by decades of distrust.

"There's no good thing if Japan and China confront each other," Fukuda said Sunday.

Ties between east Asia's two dominant nations, long coloured by Japan's brutal invasion of China before and during World War II, have improved rapidly.

China cut high-level contacts with Tokyo during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi due to his visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which venerates 2.5 million war dead including war criminals who invaded China.

But Koizumi's successor Shinzo Abe, and now Fukuda, have reached out to Beijing to keep diplomatic ties on a par with a deepening trade relationship, partly due to intense lobbying by Japanese industrialists seeking a warmer atmosphere.

Both sides have said President Hu intends to visit Japan in 2008, probably in the spring, at the culmination of a series of landmark visits that also saw Wen travel to Japan earlier this year.