China, Japan agree to talk

At the Asia-Europe foreign ministers meeting in Kyoto, China and Japan agreed to a joint study of their common history and to hold talks later in May on the disputed gas field in the East China Sea. During their latest meeting on Saturday, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, were deeply divided over Japanese textbooks that critics say whitewash Japan's wartime aggression, Agence France Presse reported, citing an unnamed Japanese official. Li described the "textbook of the Japanese rightists" as "wrong", while Machimura reportedly complained that Beijing had failed to properly acknowledge Japanese aid to China.