S. Korea to rule out summit with Abe unless he ends visits to shrine: official

South Korea will not hold a summit with Japan even after the latter names its new leader unless he stops visiting Tokyo's war shrine, a presidential aide said Wednesday, referring to Shinzo Abe, the front-runner for Japan's premiership.

"Whoever becomes Japan's next prime minister, we will keep our stance expecting Japan to show actions of efforts to earn trust from the international community," Seo Joo-seok, senior secretary for security policy to President Roh Moo-hyun, said in an interview with KBS radio.

Roh has suspended summits with his Japanese counterpart Junichiro Koizumi since their last meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in the South Korean city of Busan in November last year in response to Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. South and North Korea and China see the shrine as the symbol of Japan's militarism, as top Japanese war criminals from World War II are enshrined there among 2.5 million war dead.

Abe, the chief cabinet secretary expected to succeed Koizumi in September, visited the shrine in April and has not promised to stop such visits if he is elected.

The Japanese government was reportedly seeking to hold a summit with South Korea and China in international meetings such as the Asia-Europe Meeting next month and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November.

Seo said Seoul has yet to consider Japan's possible proposal of a summit in a third country.

Koizumi visited the shrine Tuesday, the anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia, sparking protests from Seoul and Beijing that accused him of reviving militarism on such a sensitive date.

Korea regained sovereignty on that date in 1945 when Japan's 35-year colonial occupation ended.

Yun Byung-se, Seoul's deputy foreign minister, also stressed in a meeting with the governing Uri Party that, "Unless the next prime minister shows a changed attitude, Japan will keep having its relations with Korea further retracted and its isolation from the international community further deepened."

Seoul, Aug. 16 (Yonhap News)