TOKYO: There will be no summit between Tokyo and Seoul on the sidelines of a regional gathering starting at the weekend because of Japan's upcoming election, a report said Friday.
South Korea has become unwilling to proceed with the meeting in Cambodia since Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced he was dissolving the lower house for a December 16 general election, Kyodo News reported, citing unnamed government sources.
The two countries will wait until Japan's next prime minister is in place to work on improving ties soured over the sovereignty of a pair of islands, the report said.
No one from the department overseeing relations with Seoul was available for immediate comment.
South Korea goes to the polls in mid-December to choose a new president.
The report came after India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh scrapped his visit to Japan because of the upcoming poll.
The annual Japan-China-South Korea summit on the sidelines of the upcoming get-together of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Cambodia also looks unlikely.
Amid continued strained relations between Tokyo and its neighbours, China, the putative host of this year's talks, has not yet organised the customary annual meeting, a Japanese diplomat said earlier this week.
The leaders of the three East Asian giants have held the three-way talks almost every year since 1999 on the sidelines of the annual ASEAN summit meetings.
Meetings between Japan and China and between Japan and South Korea have taken place almost every year at past gatherings.
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