China lodged yet another protest with Japan on Friday over Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone's remarks that the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States was applicable to China's Diaoyu Islands as well.

According to reports by the Taiwan-based Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC), an official of the US State Department familiar with East Asian affairs told a press conference in Washington on Friday that the Diaoyu Islands were always under Japan's administrative jurisdiction. The Japan-US security treaty was applicable to these islands as well, it quoted him as saying.

Nakasone echoed the US official's remarks afterwards.