Jul 31 12:31 AM US/EasternTOKYO, July 31 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura expressed the view Thursday that the U.S. federal naming agency's move to restore a description that a pair of disputed islets belongs to South Korea does not represent a change in U.S. position over the issue.
"We think that we should not react excessively to what one U.S. government agency does," Machimura told a news conference. "We do not perceive that the change in the description on a website represents a change in the United States' position."
President George W. Bush said Wednesday he has ordered that recognition of South Korea's ownership of the Seoul-controlled rocky islets, which Japan also claims as its own, be reinstated in the database of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.
The order came after the agency was found to have recently revised its description of the disputed territory as an area of "undesignated sovereignty," prompting the South Korean Embassy in Washington to lodge a protest.
Machimura said the Japanese government is not thinking about taking any actions in response to Bush's order.
He said the U.S. government has restored the previous description in the process of examining where the islets belong, citing remarks by Dennis Wilder, senior director for Asia on the U.S. National Security Council, who said that the United States does not take a position on this territorial dispute.
The board's website previously said the Liancourt Rocks, another name for the islets known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, were under South Korea's control.
On the order of the U.S. president, the board changed the description back to the previous one.
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