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Asian powers in rare summit on economic crisis, NKorea
AFP - 2 hours 3 minutes ago
FUKUOKA, Japan (AFP) - - Leaders of China, Japan and South Korea were set for a rare joint summit Saturday to try to shield Asia from the global economic crisis and break an impasse in stemming North Korea's nuclear drive.
Host Japan said it hopes the summit will study expanding the Chiang Mai Initiative, a system of currency swaps set up in 2000 to protect Asia from regional financial turmoil.
The joint summit of the three countries -- which together account for three-quarters of Asia's gross domestic product -- is their first other than shorter three-way meetings on the sidelines of international meetings.
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso hosts South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka, where Aso's wealthy family comes from.
The summit comes after years of efforts to mend relations in the region. China and South Korea for several years until 2006 refused high-level meetings with Japan due to disputes related to Tokyo's wartime aggression in Asia.
On the eve of the summit, South Korea announced an increase totalling almost 45 billion dollars in its currency swaps with China and Japan. South Korea is eager to widen such deals as its won currency has come under massive selling pressure in the global crisis.
Japan has said that it hopes to strengthen currency swaps on a permanent basis by expanding the Chiang Mai Initiative, named for the Thai city where the regional deal was reached in 2000.
Japan also hopes the summit can come up with plans for a quick capital injection into the Asian Development Bank, giving it the power to help emerging economies in the region, said Kazuo Kodama, the foreign ministry press secretary.
The three countries make up half of the six-nation forum which is trying to persuade North Korea to scrap its nuclear programme in return for aid and diplomatic benefits.
The latest round of six-country negotiations collapsed in Beijing this week, leading Washington to halt fuel aid shipments to energy-strapped North Korea until it agrees to a written plan to verify its nuclear disarmament.
Japan has championed a hard line on North Korea and refused to offer aid due to a dispute over Pyongyang's past kidnappings of Japanese civilians to train its spies. China and South Korea, however, are major partners of the North.
The three countries will also discuss development in Africa, where all have been stepping up aid, investment and diplomatic activity.
China has come in for intense criticism for supporting African nations such as Sudan, which are shunned by Western democracies.
"The time has come to encourage China to accept established international rules in extending its assistance to Africa," Kodama said.
Japan and China had tense relations during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi, who championed a greater role for Japan and went each year to a controversial shrine to Japanese war dead including war criminals.
But the Asian powers, whose economies have become increasingly interlinked, have since been repairing relations. Saturday's summit will be the sixth between the two countries this year.
Kodama said Japan would raise -- but not dwell upon -- its concerns over a recent intrusion by Chinese survey ships into waters Tokyo regards as its own in the East China Sea.
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