South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon indicated Wednesday that he may call off his visit to Japan scheduled for later this month amid a diplomatic rift over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's pilgrimage to a controversial Tokyo shrine.

"Under the current situation, it is not appropriate (for me) to push to visit Japan," Ban said during a regular press briefing.

He made the remarks while disclosing that diplomatic authorities of the two nations had previously discussed his Japanese trip but reached no conclusion on concrete schedule.

Ban had planned to visit Tokyo sometime this month to have a one-on-one meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura.

"We were in consultations with Japanese officials on Foreign Minister Ban's itinerary there for discussions on making progress at next month's six-way talks (on North Korea's nuclear program) and the APEC summit," a ranking ministry official said on the condition of anonymity.

On Monday, Koizumi paid homage to the shrine that commemorates 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including 14 convicted Class-A World War II criminals, in line with his campaign manifesto.

It was his fifth visit there since he took office in April 2001. All of his trips to the shrine have infuriated South Korea and other Asian countries that still harbor bitter memories of Japan's wartime atrocities.

It also highlighted Tokyo's fragile political relationships with Seoul, already marred by a rift over Japan's bid to distort history and claim sovereignty over Dokdo, a set of volcanic islets in the East Sea.

Immediately after Koizumi's shrine visit, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun suggested that he may cancel a regular summit with the Japanese leader slated for December.

In a meeting with a group of South Korean reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday, Japan's top diplomat Machimura expressed his hope that President Roh and Ban would stick to their original schedules.

He stressed that Koizumi's shrine visit was a personal pilgrimage, much like a Christian going to church.

Despite the explanation, China decided to boycott Machimura's visit to Beijing slated for this weekend in protest.

Earlier in March, Minister Ban had canceled his scheduled trip to Japan after a Japanese prefecture introduced legislation that lays claim to Dokdo with the tacit approval of the Japanese government.

Source: Xinhua