TOKYO, Sept 14 - Preparations are under way for Shinzo Abe to hold an ice-breaking summit meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao after he becomes Japan's prime minister, a senior Japanese lawmaker close to Abe said on Thursday.

[Related: Post-Koizumi leader urged not to visit war Shrine]

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, is expected to become the nation's next prime minister, raises his arm during a campaign tour for leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Atsugi, west of Tokyo September 14, 2006. [Reuters]

China had refused to hold such meetings with outgoing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi because of his visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, seen by Beijing and by South Korea as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

"It's very possible," former foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura told Reuters, referring to a Japan-China summit after Abe's expected election as prime minister on September 26.

Machimura, a senior Abe campaign manager in his bid to succeed Koizumi, said that summits with South Korea would also resume, but a meeting with China was likely to come first.

Machimura said Japanese and Chinese officials had been meeting to discuss a summit. Media reports said senior diplomats from the two countries were likely to hold talks in Tokyo next week to pave the way for an Abe-Hu meeting.

Abe has defended Koizumi's Yasukuni visits but declined to say whether he too would pay his respects as prime minister at the shrine, which honours 14 wartime leaders convicted as war criminals along with Japan's millions of war dead.

"He wants to minimise the issue, both domestically and diplomatically," Machimura said.

Abe has neither confirmed nor denied media reports that he made a secret visit to Yasukuni in April, and he reiterated on Thursday that he would not disclose his future plans.

"Those who tell me not to make pilgrimages are now telling me to be clear. I wonder what that is all about," Abe told members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Abe is almost certain to replace Koizumi as head of the ruling party and hence become prime minister due to the LDP's grip on parliament.

OCTOBER SUMMIT?

Machimura refrained from commenting on the timing of a possible summit.

Japanese media have said Abe was eyeing a visit to Beijing as early as October, rather than wait to meet Hu on the sidelines of an Asian Pacific leaders' gathering in Hanoi in November.

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