ID :
440591
Tue, 03/21/2017 - 00:54
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Japan PM Abe to Visit Russia for Summit in Late April

Tokyo, March 20 (Jiji Press)--Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Russia in late April to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, foreign ministers of the two countries agreed in Tokyo Monday. It will be the 17th Abe-Putin summit. The two leaders last met in Nagato in the western Japan prefecture of Yamaguchi in December last year. Tokyo hopes that the upcoming summit will promote talks with Moscow on joint economic activities on the four Russian-held islands off Japan's Hokkaido as well as negotiations to conclude a bilateral peace treaty by resolving the long-standing territorial dispute over the four islands, called Northern Territories in Japan. As for the joint activities, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, decided on further discussions to pick priority projects and on legal issues. The Russian side proposed to effectively abolish visas for exchanges between chiefly former Japanese residents and current Russian residents on the four islands, while the Japanese side presented a plan to promote ties between Russia's Sakhalin and Hokkaido. Kishida and Lavrov also agreed to consider designating at least one more point where former Japanese residents in the Northern Territories can enter the four-island area for grave visits and return to Japan from there. The idea of allowing the use of aircraft for such visits will also be examined further. END

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