"One of the priorities of his bilateral meetings will be to explain the issue and Japan's efforts to resolve it," government spokesman Satoru Satoh told a small group of reporters as the 46-nation Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) opened in Brussels.

The premier is to hold bilaterals with Australia, France, Germany and top EU officials.

Asia's two largest economies have been embroiled in a tense diplomatic standoff since Japan's arrest on September 8 of a Chinese trawler captain near disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Though Japan has released the captain tensions remain high with Beijing freezing high-level talks.

Japan remained "open" to face-to-face talks between Kan and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, also in Brussels, but there had been no invitation to talk from Beijing and "no arranged meeting" was on the cards during the two-day summit.

But "no one can deny they are at the ASEM meeting at the conference table and they might meet incidentally," he added.

Tokyo's position remained firmly the same, he added.

"There does not exist any question regarding Japan's territorial sovereignty" over the disputed island chain, called Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China.

"We would like to keep maintaining friendly and cooperative relations," he said. "The China side has reacted by escalating ths situation."

Japan says their sovereignty dates back to the late 19th century and that Chinese interest in the isles dates to the development of petroleum resources on the East China Sea continental shelf in the late 1970s.

Meanwhile China this weekend called on Japan to "maintain the full spectrum of relations" between the two nation.

The statement by Ma Zhaoxu, chief spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs, came after Kan called on China to behave as a "responsible member of the international community".

Ma nevertheless reiterated China's claim to the islands, saying they "have always been Chinese territory" and repeated Beijing's line that Tokyo's arrest and detention of the fisherman was "absurd" and "illegal".

The incident began with the arrest of a fisherman for allegedly ramming Japanese coastguard vessels.

He was subsequently released in what was criticised at home as a climbdown by Japan in the face of Chinese pressure, but the war of words continued.

China's arrest of four Japanese for allegedly illegally intruding on a military site last week heightened tensions, although both sides insisted the move was unrelated to the maritime spat.

Three of the four were freed and arrived back in Japan on Friday, although a fourth remains in detention.

In an apparent conciliatory move by Japan, Tokyo this week signalled Kan's intention to go to Brussels for the EU-Asia summit in a bid to engineer a meeting with China's Premier Wen Jiabao.

Feelings in Japan continue to run high, however, with nationalists staging a rally in Tokyo on Saturday to protest at what they saw as the country's "diplomatic defeat" in the trawler incident.

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