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.

"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.

His remarks were echoed by Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, who called the sour ties between Japan and its neighbors a "psychological problem."

"This subject will come up again and again. I think this is an unnecessary friction and unnecessary irritation, which will slow down the process of integration" of Asia, he said.

"I think both governments want to cooperate with Japan. They need Japanese investment, Japanese technology and Japanese markets. If this irritation comes up again and again, it slows down the process," said Lee, an ethnic Chinese who is "minister mentor" in the cabinet of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

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.

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

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.

"Unless we overcome this mountain of history, we can't achieve a friendly relationship between China and Japan," Chinese ambassador to Japan Wang Yi said.

"We need to reach an agreement over the very basic perception of history," he said.

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