Japan's Noda Addresses Island Spats at UN

NEW YORK—In a move rare in Japanese diplomacy, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda addressed the territorial disputes simmering between Japan and its Asian neighbors Wednesday in a speech delivered to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

"Securing peace, the safety of its people, national sovereignty and protecting its land and seas is a natural duty of a state," Mr. Noda said, according to a prepared statement of his remarks. "Japan will fulfill its duty in accordance with international law."

"Any attempt to realize one's claim through force or intimidation goes against the wisdom of humanity and should never be accepted," Mr. Noda said.

Mr. Noda didn't mention South Korea and China by name, the two countries with whom Japan's territorial disputes have escalated in recent weeks. But he specifically raised the importance of adherence to the International Court of Justice for international dispute settlement.

"Peaceful resolution of conflicts through international law is the principal of the UN Charter and the fundamental rule shared by the international community," Mr. Noda said. "We will strictly abide by this rule and look to international law."

Japan last month formally suggested to South Korea that the two countries take their dispute over the Liancourt Rocks—known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea—to the ICJ. South Korea rejected the recommendation.

Unlike past years, when a well-prepared speech and prearranged talks between leaders were the norm, a meeting between the foreign ministers of Japan and China, in the midst of a bitter conflict over another chain of islands, only materialized at the last minute on Tuesday evening.

While the two sides agreed to maintain an open dialogue in spite of a territorial spat that has spawned violent anti-Japan demonstrations in some Chinese cities, they were far from reaching a consensus on the ownership of the Senkaku islands--known as the Diaoyu in Chinese.

As for Mr. Noda's Wednesday speech, officials couldn't finalize the draft until just hours before delivery, a rarity in Japanese diplomacy.

Traditionally, the annual September U.N. General Assembly attendance by Japan's representatives had been a place to emphasize cooperation and solidarity with the global community, with government officials largely staying away from controversial issues.

That has especially been the case in recent years, since the revolving door of Japanese prime ministers tended to switch right before the assembly meeting, making their New York trip the occasion for a "diplomatic debut" for the new leaders—oftentimes marking their first leadership meeting with Japan's most important ally, the U.S.

Last year, Mr. Noda's speech focused on thanking the international community for its humanitarian aid in that year's earthquake and tsunami disaster, and the lessons learned from the subsequent nuclear accident.

Mr. Noda's predecessors have promised development aid and set high goals for cutting carbon emissions. But with globally shared enemies--terrorism, hunger, climate change—and common goals, their speeches at the General Assembly were hardly controversial.

But this year, with heightened tensions in East Asia over territorial disputes developing into political unrest between the world's second and third largest economies, Mr. Noda's speech had been closely followed.

Mr. Noda made a point of raising Japan's territorial conflicts in all his bilateral meetings Tuesday, even with countries that likely possess no interest in the matter.

The meeting between Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba and his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, lasted an hour Tuesday and centered on the topic of the territorial issue.

"China insisted on their own position, in a severe manner," Mr. Gemba said after the meeting.

Mr. Gemba said he protested to his counterpart about the actions of Chinese demonstrators and called for restraint, after some of the anti-Japanese protests in more than 100 Chinese cities last week turned violent, leaving burned Japanese factories and vandalized stores.

"Violence is unacceptable under any circumstances," Mr. Gemba told Mr. Jiechi, according to a Japanese Foreign Ministry official present at the meeting.

There are no plans for a meeting between the two countries' leaders, Mr. Gemba said.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported that Mr. Jiechi described the Japanese government's purchase of the islands from Japanese private owners as "a gross violation of China's territorial integrity and sovereignty, an outright denial of the outcomes of victory of the world antifascist war and a grave challenge to the postwar international order."

The Japanese official who briefed the news media said that because the two sides agreed not to reveal details of the meeting, he could neither confirm nor deny that such statements were made.

While the two sides agreed that dialogue at various levels should continue, they failed to reach an agreement on their ownership claims over the uninhabited islets, the official said.

"We can't deny that [the conflicting views] have developed into a significant problem that affects our bilateral relationship, and we agreed to maintain dialogue … but that isn't to say we are acknowledging their claim as valid," the official said.

Write to Toko Sekiguchi at toko.sekiguchi@dowjones.com