JAKARTA -- The leaders of Japan and China met Saturday in an effort to end a dispute over Japan's wartime aggression that has badly damaged relations between the two Asian powers and alarmed their neighbors.
With Koizumi smiling and Hu assuming a solemn expression as they launched their talks at a Jakarta hotel, the two shook hands and exchanged words on the tsunami disaster suffered by people in Indonesia.
The meeting -- the first top-level discussion since huge anti-Japan protests erupted earlier this month in major Chinese cities -- lasted 55 minutes.