TOKYO, March 28 (AFP) - Senior diplomats from Japan and China entered talks Monday in Tokyo to address a growing rift, an official said.

The meeting comes amid mounting rows between the two nations over China's growing military spending, a disputed gas field and Japan's treatment of its colonial legacy.

The talks were being held between Kenichiro Sasae, director general of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and Cui Tiankai, chief of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Department.

The diplomats will talk on "a broad range of bilateral issues," a Japanese foreign ministry official said.

Sasae is also Japan's troubleshooter on North Korea and was in Beijing in late February to discuss ways to bring Pyongyang, which is allied with China, back to negotiations on the Stalinist state's nuclear ambitions.

The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported last week that Sasae and Cui would try to work out an agreement for a visit to China in mid-April by Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura.

Relations between the neighbors have been souring, with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi openly clashing Sunday with visiting French President Jacques Chirac over European Union plans to lift an embargo on selling arms to China.

Japan in December for the first time told its defense planners to consider China a potential threat, a month after a Chinese submarine intruded near a gas field that the two energy-importing countries dispute.

China has declared Koizumi persona non grata due to his pilgrimages to a Tokyo shrine honoring Japanese war dead including convicted war criminals.

Japan is widely seen as using development aid to China as a substitute for an outright apology over its wartime atrocities as demanded by Beijing.