Russia continues work on issue of concluding peace treaty with Japan - Stepashin

TOKYO, August 3. /TASS/. Russia continues to work on a peace treaty with Japan and supports the development of cooperation with this country, President of the Russian Book Union (RBU), former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin said on Monday at a symposium on the occasion of the opening in Japan of the 9th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES). "We hope that a meeting of the Russian-Japanese intergovernmental commission will be held before the end of this year," he said. "Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida is to attend the event from the Japanese side, and First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov - from the Russian." "Also, certainly, Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Japan," Stepashin said. "And now we are making the corresponding preparations to make this meeting a substantive event." "Russia understands and sees that cooperation between our countries is developing, and we have not at all stopped the work on the issue of concluding a peace treaty," he said. According to the RBU president, "had Putin and Abe held a meeting in Beijing, it would put a period to the history of the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II." The symposium, timed to coincide with the opening of the congress was also attended by former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and former Foreign Minister of South Korea Han Seung-soo. The symposium focused on the development of China and the global pivot to Asia. The International Council for Central and East European Studies was established in 1974. The Council brings together research organisations and scholars from different countries who study the problems of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as a number of Asian countries, such as China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The ICCEES World Congress is held every five years and now for the first time it has gathered outside of Europe and America. This year’s congress that will run from 3 to 8 August will bring together about 1,500 people from more than 60 countries. Read more