Tokyo: A team of Japanese surveyors on Sunday sailed to a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea which the nationalistic governor of Tokyo wants to buy amid a widening diplomatic row with China.
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, known for his outspoken views, dispatched the team, which arrived at the island chain claimed by both countries, known in China as Diaoyu and in Japan as Senkaku.
Ishihara wants to buy them from their private owners to highlight Japan’s claim and build a small harbour for fishing vessels. The 25-member team remained on their boats to survey the shoreline and waters around the rocky uninhabited isles, Japanese television showed.
The national government rejected their request to land on the islands. “Seeing it with your own eyes is different from seeing them on a map,” Seiichiro Sakamaki, the Tokyo official leading the team, told Japanese television networks as he stood aboard a survey ship near the islands. “The scale and size are very clear to see. The governor has asked what could be done to build a small harbour. We want to check the islands with that in mind,” he said. Ishihara, a vocal critic of China, has previously said he hoped to visit the islands himself in October when he sends another survey mission.
Pro-Beijing activists were arrested by Japanese authorities and deported when they landed on the island. About a dozen Japanese nationalists raised their country’s flag on the island days later, prompting protests in cities across China.
Japan’s national government is also considering buying the islands for USD 26 million from the same landowners with whom Ishihara is negotiating, the Nikkei newspaper on Sunday said.
By avoiding Ishihara’s direct involvement in managing the disputed islands, Japan wants to prevent the dispute with China from heating up further, local media have said. (AFP)
