  Jia Qinglin, the head of China's top political advisory body,
made the gesture at a meeting in Beijing with former Japanese
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, the official China Daily
newspaper reported Thursday.  Japan has steadfastly refused
China's past calls to hold talks over the islands, with Tokyo
arguing that it holds sovereignty over the islets and thus there
is nothing to negotiate.  Jia is believed to be the highest-
ranking Chinese official to publicly issue such a call, and the
mild tenor of his remarks—omitting China's standard accusation
that Japan is wholly responsible for the frictions—was seen as a
signal Beijing hopes to arrest momentum toward an all-out
crisis.  "The two sides should appropriately handle questions
surrounding the Diaoyu islands and other and other issues on
which their stances' differ," Jia said, using the Chinese term
for the tiny uninhabited islands lying north of Taiwan. Japan,
which controls the islands, calls them the Senkakus.  Jia is due
to retire in March and Hatoyama