China's Foreign Minister said he had cancelled a meeting with his counterpart from Japan, blaming Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's "arrogance" over a controversial war shrine.

"The leader of a certain country is still worshipping war criminals. Surely this is wrong," Li Zhaoxing said on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meeting.

"For an important leader of an important country to be so arrogantly and blatantly hurting the feelings of the people of other Asian countries, what sort of behaviour is this?

Correct mistake

"Can one accept this? Nobody can.

"This mistake should be corrected," he was quoted by the New Straits Times as saying.

A Japanese official confirmed that the lunch meeting scheduled for yesterday had been called off.

China and South Korea have been angered by Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which honours 2.5 million Japanese war dead.