Moscow and Tokyo in talks over 70-year land dispute
NAGATO // The leaders of Russia and Japan held talks at a hot springs resort in western Japan yesterday on a territorial dispute that has divided their countries for 70 years.
The meeting in Nagato city – the Russian president’s first official visit to a G7 country since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 – came despite the fact that Japan has sanctions on Russia. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said he and Russian president Vladimir Putin spent much of their three-hour meeting discussing the dispute over four islands seized by the former Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War and a peace treaty officially ending the two countries’ wartime hostilities.
Following their discussions, the two men ordered a start to consultations on possible joint economic activity on four disputed islands, said Kremlin economic aide Yuri Ushakov.
A statement on the order will be published today, he said.
The disagreement over the four southern Kuril Islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories, has kept the two countries from signing a peace agreement after the Second World War.
Mr Abe hopes that possible economic cooperation on the islands will help solve the territorial dispute and bolster ties.
He did not say if there had been any progress on the territorial issue, but a major breakthrough is unlikely. Mr Putin credited Mr Abe’s efforts for “a certain movement in the development of ties”. Talks are scheduled to move to Tokyo today.
James Brown, a Japan-Russia expert at Temple University’s Japan campus in Tokyo, said the meeting was an extraordinary development.
“I think prime minister Abe is being really quite bold in announcing this new approach to relations with Russia,” he said.