Japan Keen For Deal on East China Gas Fields

Japan will call for an early solution to a feud with China over disputed gas fields when foreign ministers meet for broad-ranging talks in Beijing this weekend, a Japanese ministry official said.

Frosty relations between the Asian neighbours have thawed over the past year -- an improvement symbolised by this week's landmark port call to Tokyo by a Chinese missile destroyer.

But the dispute over how to develop natural gas in the East China Sea has shown scant signs of a solution.

"I hope the Chinese side will make a political decision on this issue to make a final agreement," the Japanese foreign ministry official told reporters on Thursday.

"The Chinese side is very much aware of the importance of reaching an agreement on this issue," he said, adding Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura would raise the issue in talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Beijing on Saturday.

Those talks will be followed by others on macro-economic policies and Beijing's currency reforms, climate change, and trade and investment.

An 11th round of talks on how to develop natural gas in the East China Sea ended earlier this month with no sign of progress, prompting Japan's top government spokesman to say the dispute could affect a planned visit to China by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. China quickly denied that that was the case.

The Japanese official said that resolving the gas feud was not a precondition for Fukuda's visit, which Tokyo has said could be later this year or early in 2008.

But he noted that then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had agreed in April that the two sides would report to their leaders on a compromise in the autumn.

"This is the timing for us to accelerate the efforts," he said. "(It is) not only the economic implications, but Japanese public opinion."

Both sides are eager to secure new oil and gas supplies but disagree over where the maritime boundary separating their exclusive economic zones should lie.

China's state-controlled CNOOC Ltd said in April that it had begun producing gas from Tianwaitian field and was ready to begin producing from the larger Chunxiao field in the area, raising fears in resource-poor Japan fears that such production could siphon gas from what Tokyo sees as its side of the zone.