Last week, Umarali Kuvatov, leader of a Tajik movement called Group 24, who fled the country in 2012 reportedly after a business deal with the president’s son-in-law went wrong, fell ill while having dinner in Istanbul. RUSSIA is not the only former Soviet republic where opposition leaders are being gunned down in the street. Despite their tentative rapprochement in Seoul, there is much still trying to pull Japan, South Korea and China apart. Though ostensibly designed to counter North Korean aggression, China has expressed displeasure to South Korea-fearing it may also be used to contain China. Yet Ms Park is vacillating on another front that concerns America: accepting its advanced anti-missile defence system (known as THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defence). Tension between them, it says, has been a “strategic liability”. But it is easier to say sorry to your friends.Īmerica is certainly pleased by improving ties between its two Asian allies, South Korea and Japan. The template of his speech is likely to be one he delivered to Australia’s Parliament in Canberra in November, in which he offered his “sincere condolences” for the horrors of the war.

It may get a better sense when he visits Washington at the end of April, becoming the first Japanese prime minister to address a joint session of Congress. Shen Dingli of Fudan University in Shanghai says that China is unlikely to take bolder steps, including towards a three-way summit between Mr Xi, Mr Abe and Ms Park, until it hears what Mr Abe has to say. The panel’s members expect no consensus, but they do hope their deliberations will foster a wider public debate.Īs for the expected statement, that is up to Mr Abe alone. He has appointed a panel to come up with some consensus on history matters in time for his expected statement on August 15th. Yet at least Mr Abe has pledged to stand by previous official anniversary apologies. They include questioning the definition of “invasion” to refer to Japan’s war in China from 1937. Nor do the historical evasions of those around Mr Abe, and sometimes of the prime minister himself. Perhaps, but building the ridge higher, which China is doing by planning a provocative military parade in September, does not help. Mr Wang described discord between China and Japan over history as “a ridge that cannot be sidestepped”. The foreign ministers’ meeting in Seoul was welcome, but the contentious issues remain, especially over matters of history in this, the 70th anniversary year of the end of the second world war. Strikingly, the three ministers also came up with a tripartite statement on North Korea’s threatening nuclear ambitions. A senior Japanese official said that President Park Geun-hye of South Korea had shown leadership in helping to broker the meeting. Common ground was found on disaster management, tourism, trade, the environment and ageing societies. The talks in Seoul have now evinced a broader recognition that grievances must not be left to overshadow essential economic relationships. More broadly, day-to-day relations between them have improved dramatically. On March 19th they held their first high-level security talks in four years. But at least the two sides are discussing a military hotline and the incursions follow a choreographed routine.

Chinese incursions into the waters surrounding the Senkakus have not decreased. In particular, a studiously sullen handshake in Beijing in November between President Xi Jinping of China and Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, helped unfreeze relations between those two countries after China had challenged Japan’s control of the Senkaku islands (Diaoyu in Chinese) and Mr Abe had visited Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine with its militarist overtones. It was the result of diplomatic shuttling and a cooling of tempers. In the meeting in Seoul, the South Korean capital, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, claimed that three-way co-operation had been put “back on a normal track”. In a fraught region, this counts as progress. Yet on March 21st the countries’ foreign ministers met for the first time in three years and agreed to push for a resumption of trilateral summits as soon as “convenient”. THE prospects for a summit between the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea had appeared bleak since an annual chin-wag, begun in 2008, was called off in 2013 over worsening territorial spats (between China and Japan, and between South Korea and Japan) and over accusations by China and South Korea that Japan was not facing up to its wartime past.

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