Asian foreign ministers met in Doha Wednesday to discuss closer economic cooperation as powerhouses China and Japan tried to work out their differences over the legacy of World War II.
The Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) meeting was inaugurated on Tuesday by Qatar's crown prince Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani with a call for Asian economic integration.
The two-day gathering continued Wednesday with a series of closed door sessions and was to be followed by a press conference and a final declaration, organizers said.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso and his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing agreed during a meeting Tuesday that "we should accelerate the negotiations… on the possibility of joint exploitation" of disputed gas fields in the East China Sea, Aso's press secretary, Yoshinori Katori, told reporters Wednesday.
Katori said the ministers, who met on the sidelines of the Asian forum, also agreed to consider setting up a "consultation and notification mechanism in order to avoid unexpected emergencies in the East China Sea."
During the meeting, the first between the two countries' foreign ministers in over a year, Aso "stated that he would make an appropriate decision based on his personal conviction and his official position as a minister" on visits to a controversial war shrine, Katori said.
Li had made clear in the meeting that the key obstacle to improving relations was Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni war shrine.
The sanctuary honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including 14 top or Class-A war criminals. China has called off all top-level meetings with Japan due to the dispute.
Japan's foreign minister also met with his South Korean counterpart in Doha Tuesday in a bid to ease tensions between Tokyo and Seoul.
The fifth ministerial meeting of the ACD, which groups 28 nations, is focused on energy and other aspects of economic cooperation, according to organizers and participants.
It will examine a recommendation to endorse the establishment of an ACD energy forum and hear a call for oil producers to invest their petrodollars in the economies of Asian consumers.
The ACD, which was set up in 2002, groups such major oil producers as Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran alongside energy-thirsty giants like China, India and Japan.
"Our continent is the biggest producer and consumer of energy in the world," Qatar's Sheikh Tamim told ministers at a dinner launching the gathering.
Asia also has a lot of "leading and promising" development models, he said.
"We have, then, all opportunities for forming a gradual economic integration that would ultimately make Asia a leading economic zone, especially since it has all the geographic, human and civilizational capabilities for success."
Sheikh Tamim said Asian nations should make better use of their potentials to "help establish security and stability in Palestine, Iraq and the Gulf region, being an inseparable part of Asian security".
"We have to be keen on keeping the Gulf and the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction," he said.
Qatar's and Russia's foreign ministers had earlier both called at a joint news conference for a diplomatic settlement of Iran's standoff with the West over its nuclear program, which Washington suspects hides an attempt to develop an atomic weapon.
