Mr Cook told Japanese Foreign Secretary Masahiko Koumura that the treatment of British PoWs was still a "sensitive issue" that aroused "very strong sentiments among the British people", a Japanese spokesman said.

But the spokesman repeated Japan's long-standing view that the issue of compensation had been dealt with in the 1951 Treaty between Britain and Japan.

But he added: "We understand the sentiments of the former prisoners of war and we think efforts to open their minds to reconciliation are vitally needed."

Mr Cook raised the issue during a meeting in London in which Middle East issues were top of the agenda as Mr Koumura is shortly to embark on a tour of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Israel.

The low-profile meeting was also opportunity for Mr Cook to brief the Japanese minister on why it was necessary for the UK and US to carry out air strikes on Iraq and to inform him of humanitarian initiatives that are being implemented to help the Iraqi people.

More than 12,000 Britons died as prisoners of the Japanese

But former PoW organisations pressed the foreign secretary to demand an apology from Japan for its conduct during the war and to raise the issue of compensation for victims of brutality in its World War II camps.

Speaking before the meeting the chairman of the Japanese Labour Camp Survivors Association, Arthur Titherington, 77, said: "What we need is for something concrete to come out of this meeting - not just the usual hot air.

"This problem is not going to go away for the government, because I intend to keep on going as long as I am alive."

'Debt of honour'

Joan Bulley, 60, who represents civilians interned by the Japanese, said: "The Japanese owe us a debt of honour.

"The government must raise this issue and keep pressing the Japanese Government on our behalf."

More than 12,400 Britons died in Japanese captivity and thousands more suffered appalling physical and mental scars.

British former PoWs are campaigning for what they term a "meaningful apology", despite recently losing a court case in Japan that would have secured survivors £13,000 in compensation each.

Japan says that all such claims were settled with a payment roughly equivalent to £76 to each survivor under the terms of the San Francisco Treaty of 1951.

The veterans and several historians maintain that this was a Cold War "treaty of convenience" and that Japan owes a moral debt to survivors - a case supported by Germany's continued payments to Holocaust survivors and other atrocity victims in the decades after 1951.