Japanese foreign minister plans to visit Moscow to discuss peace treaty with Russia

HAGOYA /Japan/, November 22. /TASS/. Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi plans to visit Moscow in the near future to discuss the peace treaty with Russia. "I would like to visit Russia in the near future and to hold a detailed discussion, namely on the issues related to the peace treaty," he said on Friday during the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting while holding talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. "I commend the organization of the first trip [of Japanese tourists] to the four [Kuril] islands. I would like to adhere to the agreements of our leaders in a steady manner and to fully implement the potential of Russian-Japanese relations," Motegi said. "In my role as the Japanese foreign minister, I am ready to make every effort to achieve a new level of development in our cooperation." After the meeting, Lavrov and Motegi will take part in a working dinner along with their G20 colleagues. Earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov informed TASS that Russia and Japan maintain their principal differences on the issue of peace treaty, which hinders the negotiation process. According to the Russian diplomat, Motegi is likely to visit Moscow in the second half of December. Dispute over the Kuril Islands Since the mid-20th century, Russia and Japan have been holding consultations in order to clinch a peace treaty as a follow-up to World War II. The Kuril Islands issue remains the key sticking point since after WWII the islands were handed over to the Soviet Union while Japan laid claims to the four southern islands. In November 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Singapore and agreed that the two countries would accelerate the pace of the peace negotiations based on the 1956 Joint Declaration. The document ended the state of war and said that the Soviet government was ready to hand Shikotan Island and a group of small islands called Habomai over to Japan on condition that Tokyo would take control of them once a peace treaty was signed. However, after Japan and the United States had signed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security in 1960, the Soviet Union withdrew its obligation to hand over the islands. A Soviet government’s memorandum dated January 27, 1960, said that those islands would only be handed over to Japan if all foreign troops were pulled out of the country. Russia has stated on numerous occasions that the document does not set out handover conditions and thus requires further clarification. Read more