Biden warned Japan's Abe about visiting Yasukuni Shrine

US Vice-President Joe Biden spent an hour trying to persuade Japan's prime minister not to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, two weeks before a pilgrimage last month that sparked much fury in Asia, a report said yesterday.

In a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on December 12, Biden repeatedly urged the Japanese premier to stay away from the shrine, Kyodo News said, quoting unnamed diplomatic sources.

Yasukuni is a memorial to about 2.5 million war dead, but is controversial because those commemorated include a number of senior figures condemned to death for war crimes at the end of the second world war for their role in directing the conflict.

"I will decide by myself whether I will go," Abe reportedly responded, during what Kyodo said was a "tense" conversation with the US vice-president. Biden finally gave up, saying he would leave the decision to the prime minister, the agency added.

Immediate confirmation of the report was not available.

Abe's December 26 trip to the shrine drew condemnation from China and South Korea, who view visits there as a symbol of what they say is Japan's unwillingness to come to terms with its war-time aggression.

The shrine is also controversial because of an attached museum that offers a narrative of the war that most historians find unacceptable. It presents Japan as a frustrated liberator and a victim, rather than an aggressor.