CONCILIATORY TONE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 108, 8 May 1937, Page 10

CONCILIATORY TONE.

Japan Outlines Relations With Britain. SOVIET AND NORTH CHINA. (Received 0.30 a.m.) LONDON, May 7. Relations between Japan and Britain were given first place in. an address by the Foreign Minister, Mr. Sato, to 50 foreign Press correspondents, states "The Times" Tokyo representative. Mr. Sato ascribed recent improvements to the settlement of Keelung leasehold questions.

The Minister hoped that the visit of the Japanese delegate' to. the Coronation, Prince Chichibu, would strengthen a traditional friendship which constituted one of the main pillars r pf world peace. He assured a Soviet journalist that the negotiations were not-' connected with any question of treating Northern China as a Japanese sphere. When questioned in the House of Commons on the negotiations between Britain and Japan, the Foreign Under-Secretary, Viscount Cranborne, replied that there had been no formal negotiations between the two countries about, their respective interests in China, a British official wireless dispatch declares. A number of informal conversations, he said, had taken place in recent months with the Japanese Ambassador which had as their object the better ordering of AngloJapanese relations generally. No concrete suggestions so far had been made by either side.

In another reply Lord Cranborne stated that Britain had no intention of departing from its consistent policy of respecting the sovereign rights of China.