VLADIVOSTOK: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday urged US allies South Korea and Japan to "lower the temperature" in a simmering territorial row.
Clinton said she raised the tensions during separate talks at an Asia-Pacific summit in Russia with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, who shunned each other at the event.
"I raised these issues with both of them, urging that their interests really lie in making sure that they lower the temperature and work together, in a concerted way, to have a calm and restrained approach," Clinton told reporters.
"I think that's being heard," Clinton said at the end of a two-day summit of Asia Pacific leaders in Vladivostok, Russia.
Japan and South Korea have long been at odds over colonial history and tensions have flared between the two close US allies since Lee paid an unprecedented visit to islands controlled by Seoul but claimed by both.
"There does seem to be a recognition on the part of all of the leaders that this region of the world is the economic engine in what is still a fragile global economy," she said.
Clinton said that leaders understood "that we can't let anything happen it's not in the interest of the Asian countries, it's certainly not in the interest of the United States or the rest of the world to raise doubts and uncertainties about the stability and peace in the region".
The United States has repeatedly said that it takes no position on the sparsely populated islands, known by Koreans as Dokdo and by Japanese as Takeshima.
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