China has offered to repair Japan’s Beijing Embassy damaged in protests, but kept the heat on in a diplomatic row on Tuesday, saying it wanted UN protection for a Japanese World War Two-era germ warfare site.China witnessed three weekends of violent rallies against Japan, with many furious about a revised Japanese school textbook they say whitewashes Japan’s wartime history and opposed to its bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.Annual visits that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine are also a major irritant to relations, although he says his trips to a site that honours convicted war criminals among Japan’s war dead do not harm Japan’s interests.With Sino-Japanese ties at their worst in decades, the two Asian powerhouses have so far seemed to be talking past each other in discussions on a high-stakes partnership that brings $178 billion in annual trade.UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan weighed in, encouraging the two countries’ leaders to meet privately this week in Jakarta on the sidelines of a multilateral summit and to resolve their differences peacefully.Protesters smashed more than 20 windows at the Beijing Embassy as thousands of demonstrators converged on it on April 9, an Embassy spokesman said on Tuesday, adding that a company under China’s Foreign Ministry had offered to do the repair work.Asked if Japan was being compensated for the damage to its facilities, the spokesman said: ‘‘Not exactly.’’‘‘They offered to fix the damage’’ to the Embassy office building, he said. ‘‘My colleagues in Tokyo are thinking of how to respond to this offer.’’The Japanese ambassador’s residence several kilometres away was also attacked, with windows and what the Embassy spokesman described as ‘‘communications equipment’’ broken.Tokyo is also still seeking an apology for the attacks, something which proved elusive during a visit to Beijing on Sunday and Monday by Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura. Li Zhaoxing, China’s Foreign Minister, told Machimura the Chinese government had done nothing for which it needed to apologise, and blamed Japan for the latest flare-up.In a move that is unlikely to help matters, Xinhua News Agency said China would seek UNESCO World Heritage protection for the ruins of a Japanese germ warfare centre during World War Two called Unit 731.Located south of Harbin, capital of China’s Heilongjiang province, the laboratories, prisons and crematoria were notorious for experiments on humans to develop germ weapons, such as bubonic plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera. At least 3,000 people, including Chinese civilians, Russians, Mongolians and Koreans, were killed in experiments between 1943-45. —Reuters
