Major Japanese newspapers on Tuesday issued commentaries on Monday's Japan-South Korea summit, saying Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun failed to bridge their differences over history issues.

The two sides remained apart on the Japanese leader's visits to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine, although they confirmed Japan's plan to consider setting up a new national war memorial as urged by South Korea, Asahi Shimbun said in its article.

The two leaders remained apart over Japan's wartime past and have not reached the point of agreement after the two-hour meeting of trying to understand each other, the daily said.

A major point of contention between the two countries is Koizumi's annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 14 notorious World War II Class-A war criminals along with 2.47 million war dead, Mainichi Shimbun also pointed out in an article.

The newspaper quoted Roh as saying that the Yasukuni issue remains "the core" of the dispute between the two countries linked to Japan's wartime past in what was believed to be an implicit call for an end to the visits.

Koizumi, meanwhile, said once again that he is making the visits to the shrine as a way of promising that Japan will never go to war again, according to daily.

While the leaders stuck to their respective positions over the shrine visits, they did confirm two points agreed on by their governments through diplomatic channels in the lead-up to the talks.

As a way to solve the issue of the shrine visits, Japan would " consider" the setting up of the war memorial while taking into account Japanese public opinion and other issues, in response to a call by South Korea for the setting up of a secular memorial without the historical baggage associated with the shrine, the daily said.

But while South Korea's idea is for Japanese politicians to visit the new memorial instead of Yasukuni, Koizumi believes the two issues should not be linked together saying that there could be no facility that could substitute for the Yasukuni Shrine.

This leads any negotiation on the issue to a blind alley because Japan-China and Japan-South Korea relations can only improve if Koizumi stops visiting Yasukuni and instead pays his respects to the war dead at the new facility that does not enshrine the war criminals, Mainichi Shimbun article pointed out.

Source: Xinhua