Putin and Abe discuss peace treaty over Kuril
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday pledged to move forward on a peace treaty to solve a territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands.
The Soviet takeover of the islands in the closing days of world war II has poisoned relations between the two countries for 70 years.
“We believe it is important to patiently continue the search for a solution that would satisfy the interests of Russia and Japan and that would be accepted by the nations of both countries,” Putin said at a news conference following the talks.
He added that Russia would ‘assist’ in allowing Japanese citizens to visit the Kuril islands.
“Solving (the dispute) is not easy but we would like to end it within the lifetime of our generation,” Abe said.
He added that Tokyo was ‘thankful’ to Moscow for allowing Japanese citizens to visit the graves of relatives on the islands.
Earlier, Abe said he hoped for a ‘new breakthrough’ in settling the territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands and that he was ‘ready to reinforce cooperation in a calm but energetic manner’.
The summit is the latest attempt to draw a line under World War II since Japan and the Soviet Union began discussions in 1956.
Abe’s late father Shintaro took the lead in negotiations with Moscow as a foreign minister but died in 1991 after pushing for talks while suffering from cancer.
Japan has been careful to avoid criticising Russia, particularly its role in Syria that has drawn condemnation by Western countries, as it seeks to resolve the territorial dispute.
The two leaders also discussed the North Korea crisis.
Putin called on countries participating in regulating
We believe it is important to patiently continue the search for a solution that would satisfy the interests of Russia and Japan and that would be accepted by the nations of both countries.
the North Korea crisis to show ‘restraint in order not to allow a new spike in confrontation and to keep the situation in the political and diplomatic field’.
The two leaders on Saturday also spoke to astronauts on board the ISS via a live video link from the Kremlin.
Russian astronaut Anton Shklaperov and his Japanese colleague Norishige Kanai, on board the International Space Station ( ISS), appeared on a giant screen in the Kremlin after the two leaders held bilateral talks.
“We have been cooperating with Japan in space for over ten years,” Putin told the astronauts, stressing Japan’s “important contribution” to the functioning of the ISS.
“Allow me to express my joy to the fact that you work in such unity in space,” Abe said, according to Russian interpreters.
“Our cooperation leads to important results,” Japan’s Kanai told the two leaders.
Shklaperov said it was “particularly pleasant” that the ISS celebrates the 20th anniversary of its founding in 2018, which has been declared the year of Japan in Russia and the year of Russia in Japan. Both astronauts arrived on the ISS in December. — AFP
Vladimir Putin, Russian President