Members of an advisory panel on the World War II anniversary statement that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will issue this summer plan to call for multi-nation research of history involving not only China and South Korea but other countries as well, according to sources close to the panel.

The plan is aimed at warding off confrontations between Japan and China and South Korea over perceptions of history by involving other states, such as the United States and European countries as well as other Asian nations.

The panel will finalize a report later this month before submitting it to Abe. He is expected to consider its content before deciding what to say in the statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.

The statement is drawing close attention from China and South Korea, which suffered under Japanese wartime aggression or colonization and see Abe as a revisionist bent on watering down apologies issued by previous governments.

In a joint history research report compiled in 2010, academics from Japan and China were in disagreement on the number of victims in the 1937 massacre in Nanjing.

In a joint study report released by Japanese and South Korean historians the same year, the two sides remained apart on events and affairs during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, such as over Japan's recruitment of Korean laborers and "comfort women," and their use by the Japanese military.

The 16-member panel is headed by Japan Post Holdings Co. President Taizo Nishimuro, with Shinichi Kitaoka, president of the International University of Japan, serving as its acting head.