The White House declined Tuesday to get involved in the controversy surrounding the Japanese prime minister's much-criticized visit to a war shrine, repeating its past stance that Tokyo and its neighbors should resolve the issue through cooperation.
"The president is not going to get involved in any of that," White House spokesman Tony Snow said at a daily briefing.
He talked about efforts to build a "common sense of purpose," referring to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks that involve South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.
"The president obviously wants all parties to get along, but he is not going to get ... embroiled in that dispute," said Snow.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi defied warnings from Seoul, Beijing and other neighbors victimized by Japan's aggressions in the first half of the last century and visited the Yasukuni Shrine on Tuesday (Japan time).
Koizumi had visited the shrine five times since taking office in 2001, but the latest trip was the first time he went there on Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender at the end of World War II. Yasuhiro Nakasone was the only other Japanese prime minister to visit the controversial shrine on Aug. 15. He made the visit in 1985.
Aug. 15 is also celebrated in Korea as Liberation Day, marking the end of 35 years of Japanese colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea, China and other countries oppose the shrine, which honors Japan's 2.5 million war dead including executed war criminals, as they consider it a glorification of Japan's past militarism.
"We sternly note that such a nationalistic attitude has worsened South Korean-Japanese relations and disturbed Northeast Asia's regional cooperation and friendship," the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, deputy White House spokesperson Dana Perino advised dialogue and cooperation.
"We understand that there are historical complex issues in Asia, and we would hope that the region would be able to work together cooperatively to address those," she said.
"But the prime minister's visit is an internal Japanese matter that the United States is not going to weigh in on," she said.
At the U.S. State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack also said decisions on going to the shrine are up to Japanese politicians to make.
"As for the question of the effect on the region, we understand that there are regional tensions that spring from some of the history there," he said.
"But we think it is important that the countries of the region... look to the future and try to build good constructive, neighborly, transparent relations," McCormack told the daily briefing.
The countries should "concern themselves less with the rights or wrongs of the past and focus on the future," he said.
Another State Department official, asking not to be named, said the U.S. wants the nations of the region to resolve their issues "in an amicable way through dialogue."
"We believe that good relations are in the interest of the countries and the United States," he said.
Washington, Aug. 15 (Yonhap News)
U.S. repeats call for Japan, neighbors to resolve history issues through dialogue |
