TOKYO, November 14 (Sputnik) — Japan welcomes the positive reaction of South Korean President Park Geun-hye to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's offer to resume trilateral meetings between Japan, South Korea and China, Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida stated Friday.
"Yesterday, at the meeting of the ASEAN countries, Prime Minister Abe called for [an] urgent holding of a trilateral meeting of the foreign ministers and then the leaders of Japan, South Korea and China. As far as I know, the response of South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been positive and it should be applauded. We hope that South Korea as the presiding country will show further steps in this direction," Kishida said at a press conference.
The trilateral summit would be the first since 2012. A cooling in relations between Japan and the two other countries due to territorial disputes and a well-publicized visit by Abe to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, viewed as a symbol of Japanese militarism, have contributed to the current political climate.
According to media reports, a meeting of foreign affairs ministers of Japan, South Korea and China, which would precede a trilateral summit, could be held before the end of this year.
