President Hu Jintao will visit Japan in the near future, and diplomats of the two countries are discussing details of the itinerary, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said yesterday.

"There is no such an issue as postponement of President Hu's visit," said Yang at a press conference on the sidelines of the annual parliamentary session.

He made the remarks when answering questions from a Japanese journalist on whether President Hu's state visit to Japan, scheduled for this spring when "cherries are in full bloom," would be postponed to some time after May.

"Spring is a beautiful season in Japan. Both Chinese and Japanese people expect President Hu's visit in spring," Yang said, adding that the two sides are engaged in active discussion about the specific date.

"This visit will be a historic one which will boost relations between the two countries," said the foreign minister.

Speculations recently arose over President Hu's visit to Japan because of a dispute about contaminated dumplings.

In January, Japanese media reported that 10 people fell ill in the country after consuming frozen meat dumplings produced by a food plant based in north China's Hebei Province.

Japanese police found methamidophos in the vomit of those poisoned and in food packages at their houses.

But sample tests show the rest of dumplings in the same batch and other batches made at about the same time by the Chinese company were safe. So were the raw materials used in production.

Yang said that further cooperation between China and Japan is required to investigate the incident.

"We hope relevant departments of the two sides, the police in particular, can have more communication and cooperation in a cool-headed, fair, objective and scientific manner to conduct coordinated investigation and find the truth as early as possible," said Yang.

He believed it necessary to establish a long-term China-Japan food safety cooperation mechanism to carry out more timely and effective cooperation, adding both Chinese and Japanese expect such a mechanism can be set up at an early date.

He stressed China had conducted very serious and responsible investigation into the incident and had timely released initial investigation results since the government had been taking food safety very seriously and was very responsible for consumers at home and abroad. After thorough investigation, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in late February that the incident was an one-off deliberate case, not a case of food safety resulting from pesticide residue.