By Ahn Mi Young and Takehiko Kambayashi

Seoul/Tokyo (dpa) - Japan and South Korea announced an agreement Monday on the Japanese army's past use of sexual slavery, an issue that has poisoned relations between the Asian neighbours for decades.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung Se said Tokyo would provide 1 billion yen (8.3 million dollars) to a foundation to be set up by South Korea to support elderly Korean survivors.

Kishida said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse" for the use of so-called "comfort women," in wording that echoes a statement made by a senior Japanese official over more than 20 years ago.

There were no plans for Abe to make any further statements of apology, a senior Foreign Ministry official said.

Japan's nationalist premier and other political leaders previously denied sexual slavery and called the Korean and Chinese victims "prostitutes."

"On the premise that the steps agreed on will be implemented steadily, our governments will confirm that the comfort women issue will be settled in a final and irreversible manner," Kishida said.

The South Korean government said it "confirms, together with the government of Japan, that the issue is resolved finally and irreversibly with this announcement," as long as Tokyo implements the terms of the agreement.

As part of the deal, Japan demanded that South Korea remove a statue of a girl symbolizing wartime sex slaves in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

Yun said the government would discuss removing the statue with the citizens' group that put it up.

The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, however, said before the ministers' meeting that such a request "could create a new obstacle."

Abe told reporters that Japan "must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations be predestined to apologize. This is an agreement in which the determination has been put into action."

Up to 200,000 women, many of whom were Koreans, were forced into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, historians say. The Korean peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945.

Among 238 women registered with the South Korean government as victims of the sexual slavery, 192 have died, leaving 46 women still alive.

South Korea has long demanded that the sexual slavery issue be resolved in a way that surviving victims can accept.

In 1993, Japan's then-chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono offered "sincere apologies and remorse to all those ... who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women."

But the Kono statement was seen as only a partial apology and failed to ease tensions over the issue.

Abe agreed with South Korean President Park Geun Hye in November to speed up talks on sexual slavery.

Monday's agreement came as the US urged its key Asian allies to repair relations amid an increasingly assertive China and growing nuclear threats from North Korea.

Japan and South Korea are considering confirming the agreement in a joint statement that Abe and Park would issue during their meeting, Kyodo News agency reported, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.

The agreement failed to meet what victims have long wanted, said Eriko Ikeda, director of the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo.

Many survivors of the wartime brothels have demanded an official apology, reparations and the inclusion of wartime atrocities in Japanese textbooks.

"Victims have been saying for decades this is not an issue of money," Ikeda said. But the Japanese government "has failed to listen to their voices."

For many years, Tokyo insisted the issue of compensation was fully settled under a 1965 treaty with Seoul that normalized diplomatic relations.

Surviving victims regarded Monday's agreement as a hollow victory.

"We are not satisfied," Yoo Hee-Nam, 88, told a press conference in Seoul. "Because when we recall the past, it is not a matter of money.

Another victim, Lee Yong-Soo, 87, said: "They don't seem to have us victims in mind that much. I'd rather like to ignore all of it."