China says no plan for Japan meet at Asia-Pacific summit amid islands row

China's President Xi Jinping attends a signing ceremony with Jordan's King Abdullah at the Great Hall of People in Beijing September 18, 2013. REUTERS/Feng Li/Pool

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping has no plans to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during an Asia-Pacific summit this week in Indonesia, Beijing said on Monday, as both sides spar over a group of islets near potentially large oil and gas reserves.

Relations between the world's second- and third-largest economies, long strained by memories of Japan's wartime aggression, have been troubled for the past year due to the row over the tiny, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.