"Any mismanagement can lead to unintended results," Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Akira Chiba told reporters after speaking at a forum in Washington on the troubled Sino-Japanese ties.

He was responding to a warning by a former senior US State Department official at the meeting of increasing prospects of a military conflict between the two Asian giants that would make American involvement inevitable.

"The management of the situation is extremely important," Chiba said, adding that he was however "optimistic of the wisdom" of the Chinese and Japanese governments in preventing the situation from worsening.

Sino-Japanese ties have soured over Japan's wartime legacy, fuelled by visits by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine, and the publication of Japanese textbooks that allegedly whitewash Japanese wartime atrocities.

Frictions have also occurred over Beijing's opposition to Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

But Chiba said "the juicy issue" amid the sagging relations between Tokyo and Beijing was the question of a "strategic realignment" in China-Russia ties.

"The question is that the history issue is not taken care of by the art of diplomacy," he said.

"The strategic alignment or realignment can be confrontation or collaboration," he said, referring to the once close ties between Japan and China against the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

While Sino-Japanese ties have plummetted to one of their worst levels, China-Russia relations have grown closer recently.

Moscow and Beijing have wiped out old border conflicts, signed new trade accords and held large-scale joint military maneuvers.

Some analysts see the Sino-Russian rapprochement as a sign of a desire to wrest military and economic power in the Asia-Pacific region from the United States, which is linked by a half century military alliance with Japan.

"There is an increasing chance of a military miscalculation, miscommunication between the Japan and China militaries that could involve the United States," warned Randall Schriver, a former top East Asian official at the State Department during President George W. Bush's first term of office.

"My understanding is the militaries are coming into contacts (with) the potential for a more dangerous situation," he said.

A Chinese naval destroyer took aim at a Japanese military surveillance aircraft near their disputed waters in September 2005, and a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine entered Japanese waters off the Okinawa Islands a year earlier.

On a number of occasions, Chinese research vessels have also intruded into Japanese waters without giving prior notification.

"I am more worried about a conflagration in the East China Sea than in the Taiwan Strait," said Dan Blumenthal, a former senior director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the Pentagon.

He said the Asian region was "very worried" about a potential conflict between Japan and China.

Yang Bojiang, a visiting Chinese scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told the forum that Chinese leaders were more interested in resolving rising domestic issues than going to war.

He cited recent surveys on Chinese websites on 2006 challenges, saying the first nine out of the 10 priorities cited by the Chinese were domestic issues.

"Only the 10th was (related to) diplomacy," Yang said. "I don't think the attack of a foreign country is the highest concern of the Chinese leaders," he said.

Schriver said he was not aware of any US plan to contain the rising tensions.

"Some sort of CBMs (confidence building measures) between the militaries of Japan and China are welcomed," he said.

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