South Korea's prime minister yesterday went to a set of desolate islands at the center of a territorial tussle with Japan and criticized a US government agency for shifting its position on their ownership.

    The long-burning dispute over the rocky outcrop erupted again this month after an official school history guide in Japan referred to the islands as Japanese territory, triggering angry demonstrations in Seoul and an official protest from South Korea.

    "No matter what anyone says it is our child," Han Seung-soo was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency on the small cluster of islands called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese.

    The dispute took a fresh twist when the US Board on Geographic Names, which refers to them by a third name as the Liancourt Rocks, described the islands as not belonging to any state. The agency earlier had listed the islands as South Korean territory.

    Han, speaking at a weekly Cabinet meeting, called the agency's decision not to make any reference to South Korean sovereignty as "very regrettable and contrary to historic fact".

    The dispute over the lonely cluster of islands has been a persistent sore in relations between the two neighbors, reviving bitter memories of Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.

    Japan said the visit to the rocks by South Korea's prime minister was only adding to the