BEIJING: China said Friday it reached agreement with Japan to ramp up high-level contacts, the strongest indication yet of a possible meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at next week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

China’s Foreign Ministry said the two sides agreed to “gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues.” China froze high-level contacts more than two years ago amid a dispute over uninhabited East China Sea islands and other contentious issues.

No meeting has been announced, though Xi and Abe are widely expected to at least hold some kind of tete-a-tete during the summit Monday and Tuesday. It’s unclear what form that meeting would take or whether anything substantial would be discussed.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said a meeting between the two leaders had not been finalized, but an environment for talks had been achieved.

“Until now the door was closed, unfortunately, but this agreement has achieved a momentum,” he said on BS Fuji television.

“I believe everyone wants us to put an end to tensions between Japan and China,” Abe said. “It would be extremely significant for us to show the rest of the world our efforts to fulfill our responsibilities for the region’s peace and prosperity.”

In a statement on its website, China’s Foreign Ministry said the sides acknowledged their “different positions” on the islands, called Diaoyu by China and Senkaku by Japan. That implied a degree of compromise on both sides. Japan has refused China’s demand to acknowledge that the islands’ sovereignty is in dispute, but Friday’s announcement indicated that Tokyo was at least willing to concede that different views exist.