Malaysia's premier Thursday urged Japan and its neighbours to repair relations for the sake of the region, warning that their friction could jeopardize the nascent East Asian Community.

Japan's political relations with China and South Korea have been seriously strained by bitter rows over their wartime history and disputed territories.

"We are very, very concerned about it," Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a forum in Tokyo hosted by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily.

"And we fear that this situation may cease - that it may affect - our coming together to create an East Asian Community or to make an East Asian summit process a success," he said.

"What we fear is through this problem relating to these three countries," he said, it "possibly might affect the stability of East Asia."

Malaysia in December hosted an inaugural East Asia Summit, a new 16-nation grouping. It has been seen as an opportunity for China to increase its presence in Asia, due to the absence of the United States.

Abdullah said that Asean, the 10-nation Southeast Asian bloc, wanted to "sit in the driving seat" of the East Asian Community and keep "equal distance" from China, Japan and South Korea.

Right thing to do

"The three of these countries are our friends, our cherished friends, with which we have very broad ties," he said. "We cannot be choosing one side in favor of the other."

"For us to continue to express our fear and our concern, I think that is the right thing to do without appearing to be interfering into what is very specifically a bilateral concern," he said.

Japan's neighbors have been particularly upset by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni war shrine, which honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead including 14 top war criminals.

In the inaugural meeting of the East Asian Summit in December, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao refused to see Koizumi because of his visits to the shrine, which Beijing sees as a symbol of militarism.

Koizumi says he makes the pilgrimage to show respect to all war dead and to recommit Japan to pacifism.