S. Korea's Lee most likely to visit Japan in mid-December+

TOKYO, Nov. 29 Kyodo - Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Monday that South Korean President Lee Myung Bak will most likely visit Japan in mid-December for talks and asked for cooperation from both ruling and opposition parties to help Tokyo deepen its ties with Seoul, amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

During a meeting with lawmakers from the two countries, Kan called for
cross-party cooperation to pave the way for the government to return to South
Korea some of the historic Korean artifacts kept in Tokyo when Lee visits
Japan.
Kan also said at the meeting in Tokyo that Japan will unite with South Korea
and the United States to ''decisively counter North Korea's reckless and
outrageous acts.''
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama said at a news conference that
Japan supports Lee's televised speech Monday on North Korea's deadly attack on
a South Korean island last week.
Japan and South Korea are arranging a summit meeting in mid-December in Kyoto,
government sources said earlier this month.
Kan and Lee endorsed an accord to transfer to South Korea 1,205 volumes of
Korean archives that were brought to Japan during its 1910-1945 colonial rule
of the Korean Peninsula, when they last met one-to-one Nov. 14 on the margins
of an Asian-Pacific economic summit in Yokohama.
But the transfer requires the Japanese parliament's approval.
Kan promised to repatriate the cultural items this summer ahead of the Aug. 29
centenary of Japan's annexation of the peninsula. The artifacts include royal
records of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), called the Joseon Wangsil Uigwe.
The South Korean president's elder brother Lee Sang Deuk, head of the
Korea-Japan Parliamentarians' Union, was among those attending the meeting. He
said he ''highly appreciates'' Kan's statement on the centenary, released on
Aug. 10, in which he apologized for Japan's past colonial rule of the peninsula
in the hope of building future-oriented bilateral ties.
==Kyodo