Japan should address history issues by promoting the healing of wartime wounds if it wants to build a closer partnership with the United States, a White House official said Wednesday.

Evan Medeiros, senior director for Asian affairs at the White House's National Security Council, made the remark during a Brookings Institution seminar, saying the U.S. wants to see a Japan that is "influential, credible, active and a strong partner."

"Only by effectively addressing history issues by promoting healing will, I think, we achieve that kind of Japan. They will find very, very close partners in the United States," he said.

Medeiros also welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's statement that he would include Japan's remorse over the war and how the country will contribute to the region and beyond in a special statement he plans to issue to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II in August. "We thought that Prime Minister Abe's January 5th speech, in which he addressed history issues, was very important and significant," he said, adding that the statement "provided a very useful signal of how he and Japan are going to address history issues in this important year."

"We warmly welcome the statements that he made and we hope that that is realized throughout the year," he said.

Japan's relations with South Korea have been frayed for years due mainly to Tokyo's attempts to whitewash its wartime atrocities and colonial occupation. Their relations worsened further after Abe came into office as he took a series of nationalistic steps.

South Korea and Japan have not held a formal bilateral summit for more than two years as Tokyo has refused to accept Seoul's demand that it take sincere steps to resolve the issue of Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women for its troops during World War II.

The U.S. has called for Seoul and Tokyo to come to terms with each other. Frayed relations between the two key Asian allies are a cause for concern for Washington as it seeks to develop three-way security cooperation in an effort to keep a rising China in check. (Yonhap)