TOKYO, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
ordered his defence minister on Tuesday to strengthen
surveillance around islands at the heart of a territorial feud
with China, Kyodo news agency reported.
Deputy Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki summoned the Chinese
ambassador earlier in the day to protest against an “incursion”
by four Chinese maritime surveillance ships near the islands,
officials said.
“I want you to respond firmly,” Kyodo quoted Abe as telling
Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera.
The ships entered the area around noon on Monday and left in
the early hours of Tuesday, the officials said.
China’s State Oceanic Administration confirmed four Chinese
marine surveillance ships were patrolling waters near the
islands.
But China routinely maintains such ships are in Chinese
waters and a Chinese official accused Japan of intrusion.
“Japan has continued to ignore our warnings that their
vessels and aircraft have infringed our sovereignty,” the
Communist Party chief of China’s marine surveillance corps, Sun
Shuxian, said in an interview posted on the Oceanic
Administration’s website.
“This behaviour may result in the further escalation of the
situation at sea and has prompted China to pay great attention
and vigilance,” Sun was quoted as saying.
Sino-Japanese ties chilled after the Japanese government
bought the disputed islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and
Diaoyu in China, from a private Japanese owner last September.
Japan’s Defence Ministry has scrambled F-15 fighter jets
several times in recent weeks to intercept Chinese marine
surveillance planes approaching the islands.
The hawkish Abe, whose conservative Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP) returned to power in a landslide election victory last
month, has vowed a tough stance in the territorial feud.
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka, Hitoshi Ishida and Linda Sieg;
Editing by Nick Macfie)
