Singapore expresses "regret" over Koizumi's shrine visit
(AP)
Updated: 2006-08-15 16:44 SINGAPORE - Singapore on
Tuesday expressed regret over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's latest
visit to a controversial war shrine, saying it was not helpful to Asian
relations.
"We regret the visit by Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine this
morning," Singapore's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, pointing out that
the shrine visits provoke strong reactions in China, Korea and other parts of
Asia.
"They thus are not helpful to the larger common interest of building closer
relations and cooperation in East Asia, including Southeast Asia," the statement
said. "We hope that this larger common interest which Japan undoubtedly shares
will not be overlooked by Japan."
Koizumi made a pilgrimage Tuesday to the shrine, which commemorates Japan's
war dead, including convicted war criminals. The shrine is reviled by critics as
a symbol of past Japanese militarism, and periodic visits by Japanese leaders
have long been a sore point between Japan and the neighbors it occupied in the
1930s and '40s.
Though Singapore and Tokyo now have strong economic and diplomatic ties, the
country was among Asian lands overrun by Japan in the first half of the 20th
century. Japanese troops killed as many as 100,000 ethnic Chinese in
Singapore.
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