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SKorea, China, Japan show unity at first summit
By ERIC TALMADGE,Associated Press Writer AP - 2 hours 35 minutes ago
FUKUOKA, Japan - Japan, China and South Korea moved to ward off the effects of the global financial crunch at a trilateral summit Saturday, while Tokyo and Seoul criticized North Korea for stalling denuclearization talks.
The three Asian nations _ which together make up 75 percent of the east Asian economy _ have held meetings on the sidelines of broader international gatherings but this was the first time they held an independent three-way summit.
Though their countries are often at odds over the legacy of Japan's militarist past, solidarity was the word of the day.
In their key statement, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao were expected to issue an action plan to make the trilateral summit an annual event and strengthen ties through increased political and cultural exchanges.
Meeting ahead of the three-way talks, Aso and Lee welcomed a deal reached the night before to increase a bilateral currency swap arrangement to the equivalent of $20 billion. The Bank of Korea also announced a deal with the People's Bank of China worth about $26 billion.
Swaps generally entail one central bank borrowing a currency from another and offering an equivalent amount of its own as collateral.
Seoul has seen its reserves dwindle and feared that without the swap arrangements it could suffer a foreign exchange crisis because of the global financial turmoil. The South Korean currency has declined 32 percent this year amid record selling of South Korean stocks by foreign investors.
At the Japan-South Korea meeting, Aso and Lee also criticized North Korea for its lack of cooperation on the nuclear issue and stressed the importance of continuing to push together for progress.
Four days of negotiations in Beijing ended in stalemate Thursday with North Korea refusing to put into writing any commitments on inspection, making it impossible to move forward on a disarmament-for-aid agreement reached last year.
Officials said the summit was intended to be a show of unity in the face of the global economic downturn and was an important step toward better relations overall between the three neighbors.
One topic deliberately left off the official agenda was lingering animosity over Japan's pre-1945 colonization of Korea and its often brutal aggression on the Asian mainland in the first half of the last century.
Such issues have frequently flared up in the past and continue to be a thorn in relations.
But going into the talks, Japanese officials said it was "significant" that the three countries were putting such issues behind them and trying to approach the summit with a more forward-looking stance.
Other sensitive issues remain, however.
Japanese officials expressed concern over the entry of Chinese vessels' earlier this week into waters Tokyo claims near disputed southern islands known as the Senkaku in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese.
Japan lodged a protest with Beijing on Monday after the ships spent nine hours near the islands, which are claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.
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