Abe denies agreeing to shelve Diaoyu dispute

In a recent interview with US magazine, Foreign Affairs, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan never agreed with the China to shelve the issue of the Diaoyu Islands.

Referring to his duality on some historical issues, Abe blamed the role of the press for being mistakenly quoted. China's Ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai said in an interview with the same magazine, that the Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islets have been China's inherent territory since ancient times. He stressed that China's stance on the issue is persistent.

During the negotiations on the normalization of China-Japan relations in 1972 and for the signing of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1978, both sides reached important understanding and common ground on "leaving the issue of the Diaoyu Islands to be resolved later". This opened the door to normalization of the relations and was followed by tremendous progress since then.