Devil Soul
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Japan 'To Announce Disputed Island Purchase'
TOKYO, Sept 10, 2012 (AFP) -Japan's government on Monday will rubber stamp plans to nationalise a group of islands at the centre of a territorial dispute with China, reports said, a move likely to raise hackles in Beijing.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's cabinet will meet over plans to buy three of the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told a news conference.
The government's top spokesman did not elaborate, but local media reported that ministers would officially approve plans to pay the private Japanese landowners of the islands 2.05 billion yen ($26 million).
Often testy Japan-China ties took a turn for the worse in August when pro-Beijing activists landed on one of the islands.
They were arrested by Japanese authorities and deported. Days later about a dozen Japanese nationalists raised their country's flag on the same island, Uotsurijima, prompting protests in cities across China.
Reports emerged in the past week of the Japanese government's planned purchase, a move commentators see as trying to find a middle path between pressures from vocal nationalists at home and an increasingly assertive China.
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Nagahama reportedly met the landowners last week and struck the deal, which includes Uotsurijima, the largest island in the chain.
The government stepped in with its bid after Tokyo's outspoken right-wing governor, Shintaro Ishihara, surprised everyone by saying he wanted to buy the archipelago for the metropolitan government.
Ishihara had wanted to develop the chain as a way of stamping Japan's sovereignty over it, but the national government is expected to keep the islands as they are.
The government currently leases four islands and owns a fifth. It does not allow people to visit and has a policy of not building anything there.
The islands sit in a strategically important shipping area and valuable mineral resources are thought to be nearby.
TOKYO, Sept 10, 2012 (AFP) -Japan's government on Monday will rubber stamp plans to nationalise a group of islands at the centre of a territorial dispute with China, reports said, a move likely to raise hackles in Beijing.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's cabinet will meet over plans to buy three of the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told a news conference.
The government's top spokesman did not elaborate, but local media reported that ministers would officially approve plans to pay the private Japanese landowners of the islands 2.05 billion yen ($26 million).
Often testy Japan-China ties took a turn for the worse in August when pro-Beijing activists landed on one of the islands.
They were arrested by Japanese authorities and deported. Days later about a dozen Japanese nationalists raised their country's flag on the same island, Uotsurijima, prompting protests in cities across China.
Reports emerged in the past week of the Japanese government's planned purchase, a move commentators see as trying to find a middle path between pressures from vocal nationalists at home and an increasingly assertive China.
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Nagahama reportedly met the landowners last week and struck the deal, which includes Uotsurijima, the largest island in the chain.
The government stepped in with its bid after Tokyo's outspoken right-wing governor, Shintaro Ishihara, surprised everyone by saying he wanted to buy the archipelago for the metropolitan government.
Ishihara had wanted to develop the chain as a way of stamping Japan's sovereignty over it, but the national government is expected to keep the islands as they are.
The government currently leases four islands and owns a fifth. It does not allow people to visit and has a policy of not building anything there.
The islands sit in a strategically important shipping area and valuable mineral resources are thought to be nearby.