Source: Press TV
This file aerial shot taken on September 15, 2010 shows the disputed islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China in the East China Sea.
Japan is planning to nationalize scores of unclaimed remote islands in its waters to increase its territorial claims amid ongoing territorial disputes with its neighbors, a report says.
Japan’s daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Monday that the government plans to set up a task force to find owners and names of some 400 remote islands scattered across waters surrounding the Japanese archipelago in a bid to nationalize them.
“(Japan) plans to end the research next year and quickly take action, including nationalization, to remote islands with no ownership,” the daily said.
The report added that officials from Japan’s finance and justice ministries as well as the coast guard will be present at the task force.
The newspaper added that plan is part of Tokyo’s efforts to “preserve maritime resources.”
Japan has long been in a dispute with China over the sovereignty of a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyus in China.
The disputed islands are controlled by Japan and form part of Okinawa prefecture.
The islands are located near a crucial shipping lane and would give the owner exclusive oil, mineral and fishing rights in the surrounding waters.
On September 11, 2012, Tokyo signed a deal to buy three of the islands from their private Japanese owner in line with plans to nationalize the archipelago.
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Tension with Japan rises over Chinese warships
By Jonathan Soble and Leslie Hook
BD Live
BD Live
Picture: REUTERS
TOKYO — Chinese warships have passed through the narrow strait that divides northern Japan and Russia for the first time, Japan’s defence ministry said on Sunday.
The five ships, including a guided-missile destroyer, travelled in international waters through the La Pérouse Strait early on Sunday morning, the ministry said.
The vessels appeared to be returning to China after a week-long military exercise with the Russian navy in the Sea of Japan and was seen as a message of defiance for Japan and the US. Ahead of the exercises, Chinese media quoted retired admiral Yin Zhuo, who advises Chinese politicians, as saying that such manoeuvres would “have a certain level of threat to Japan, which has a dispute with China over the Diaoyu Islands and one with Russia over the Northern Territories”.
The Chinese ships could have returned home more directly by travelling southwest, back through the Sea of Japan and into the East China Sea. That made their chosen route — which would take them out into the Pacific in a broad swing around Japan — all the more provocative.
China and Japan have been embroiled in a tense standoff in the East China Sea over the Senkaku Islands, known in China as the Diaoyu, since last year. Japan administers the uninhabited group, but China and Taiwan both claim sovereignty. Japan also claims islands on the Russian side of the La Pérouse Strait, which were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War.
In recent years, China’s navy has been expanding its scope of operations with more frequent and larger exercises in the South China Sea and Western Pacific. Last month, the US confirmed that China was sending ships and aircraft into its exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from US territory, including Guam.
China has authorised double-digit increases in military spending during most of the last two decades. Chinese navy and missile forces are increasingly able to project their power across the Asian region, a trend that has created growing unease among China’s neighbours, including Japan.
Japan last week sharpened its criticism of what it says is an increasingly belligerent effort by China to assert territorial claims in disputed Asian waters, saying Beijing was using “force” in a “risky” effort to change maritime boundaries.
In the first defence white paper issued under conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan said China had “attempted to change the status quo by force based on its own assertion which is incompatible with the existing … international law”.
Last Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said the white paper “maliciously plays up the ‘China threat’”. She added that Japan was trying “to create an excuse for its military build-up”.
The state-run Global Times went further, saying the “conflict” between China and Japan was moving towards “strategic hostility”.
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