SEOUL -- Japan decided to cancel a prearranged meeting between Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the just-concluded Group of Seven summit in the U.K., according to South Korean media.

The Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that Tokyo called off the meeting in response to plans by Seoul for military exercises near Dokdo, referring to the South Korean-administered islands that Japan calls Takeshima and claims as its own.

The two countries had reached a tentative agreement to hold informal "pull-aside" talks on the sidelines of the G-7 summit, an unidentified official in South Korean's Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Yonhap.

"We think it is regrettable that the Japanese side did not respond to the pull-aside plan, which the two sides had agreed on at a working level, due to the annual drills to safeguard the East Sea territory," the official said, using South Korea's name for the Sea of Japan.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato strongly denied the report at his regular news conference, saying that "there is absolutely no fact" to it. "Not only is it baseless, it is regrettable that such a one-sided account would be made," he said.

"We lodged an immediate complaint with the South Korean side," Kato said.

South Korea is not a G-7 member but had been invited to the summit by the U.K., which chairs the group this year. Suga and Moon met in person for the first time there, exchanging greetings. Moon approached Suga, and the conversation was very brief, according to the Japanese government.

Moon later tweeted that the encounter with Suga was a "precious occasion that may serve as a new beginning" for South Korea-Japan relations and expressed disappointment that it did not lead to talks.