The Japan-China Friendship Association on Thursday urged Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to stop visiting the war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. 

The association said in a letter to the Japanese premier that he should stop his Yasukuni visit with a view to attaching importance to political relations between Japan and China.

Many Asian countries have strongly protested Japanese leaders' visits to the notorious Shinto shrine in Tokyo, which honors 14 convicted World War II Class-A war criminals responsible for Japan's aggressive war against its Asian neighbors. 

Koizumi has visited the Yasukuni Shrine every year since he took office in 2001. Last month he indicated a plan to visit the shrine again sometime this year. 

The association also presented a letter to Justice Minister Chieko Nono, calling for early ruling to resolve the lawsuit of a forced Chinese laborer as required by the plaintiff's family.  

"If the case can be solved in political way, people will regard the solution a sign of the Japanese government's effort to improve bilateral ties with China," the letter says.

The Tokyo High Court on Thursday denied compensation to the family of Liu Lianren, a deceased forced laborer from China who escaped from a work site in north Japan at the end of World War II and hid in mountains for about 13 years unaware the war had ended.

The high court overturned a 2001 Tokyo District Court decision that marked the first time a Japanese court had awarded compensation to a foreign national forcibly brought to Japan for labor during the war.

(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2005)