Japan's Position In Peace Treaty Talks With Russia Remains Unchanged - Foreign Minister

TOKYO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th October, 2020) Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said on Friday that Tokyo's position in peace treaty negotiations with Russia remained the same.

"There are no changes in the negotiations with Russia. The joint agreements, which Prime Minister [Yoshihide Suga] spoke about in parliament, are the agreements reached in Singapore and Irkutsk in 2001, and the Tokyo Declaration of 1993. Now we are advancing negotiations on the basis of an agreement on accelerating the talks to conclude a peace treaty," Motegi told reporters.

Earlier this week, Suga said that Japan was committed to the same policies on Russia pursued by his predecessor Shinzo Abe.

On September 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin held the first phone talks with the Japanese prime minister after the latter's appointment. The two leaders reaffirmed commitment to continued boosting of all aspects of the bilateral cooperation in the interest of peoples in both countries and the Asia-Pacific region in general.

The Moscow-Tokyo relations have long been complicated by the fact that the two countries have never signed a permanent peace treaty after World War II. The main issue holding the two countries back is their dispute over a group of four islands � Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and Habomai � referred to as the Southern Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan.

In November 2018, Abe and Putin agreed to accelerate peace treaty talks on the basis of a Soviet-era joint declaration. The document, signed in 1956, stipulates among other things that the Soviet Union would transfer the two disputed islands � Habomai and Shikotan � to Japan following the conclusion of a peace treaty. The agreement by the two leaders to use the declaration as the basis for peace negotiations spurred a series of meetings held the following year by Putin and Abe and their foreign ministers.