Chinese workers making Chinese dumplings at the Tianyang Food's factory in Shijiazhuang. A nationwide health scare in Japan over contaminated Chinese dumplings should not harm warming Sino-Japanese ties, the finance ministers of both countries agreed on Sunday

[Photo: AFP/HO/File]

TOKYO (AFP) - A nationwide health scare in Japan over contaminated Chinese dumplings should not harm warming Sino-Japanese ties, the finance ministers of both countries agreed on Sunday.
 
Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga and his Chinese counterpart Xie Xuren also agreed during talks here that both nations should work to prevent a similar food safety scare in future.

"The ministers agreed that this issue should not be an obstacle to the rapidly warming relationship between Japan and China," a finance ministry official told reporters.

The talks between the pair were the first face-to-face ministerial meeting since news of the poisoned dumplings emerged late last month.

The ministers agreed that "both Japan and China should make utmost efforts in finding out the true facts about the dumplings and in preventing a similar case from happening again in the future," he said.

Nukaga agreed to Xie's proposal to hold another such meeting in Tokyo in late March, the official said.

Xie was visiting Japan for the so-called "outreach meeting" on the sidelines of the Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers gathering in Tokyo on Saturday.

China, which is Japan's largest trading partner, has pleaded with Tokyo not to jump to conclusions and said it was investigating the cause of the scare.

Thousands of Japanese have complained of feeling ill after eating dumplings from China. Japan said Friday that dumplings behind the nationwide scare were likely contaminated with pesticide at a factory near Beijing.

Officials in both countries have raised the possibility of deliberate tampering with the dumplings, although their governments have made more cautious statements.

A Japanese government team last week said it found nothing unusual when it toured the factory of Tianyang Food Company near Beijing that produced the frozen dumplings for a unit of Japan Tobacco Inc.

Ties between the two nations, long coloured by Japan's brutal invasion of China before and during World War II, have improved rapidly.

China cut high-level contacts with Tokyo during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi due to his visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which venerates 2.5 million war dead including war criminals who invaded China.

But Koizumi's successor Shinzo Abe, and current Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda have reached out to Beijing to mend diplomatic ties, with Fukuda visiting China in December. Chinese President Hu Jintao is due to visit Japan in the spring, only the second by a Chinese head of state to Tokyo and the first in a decade.