Japan's Prime Minister Reaffirms Tokyo's Position On Sovereignty Of 'Northern Territories'

TOKYO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th January, 2021) Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has reaffirmed that Tokyo exercised its sovereignty on the islands of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai, referred to as the Northern Territories by Japan.

On Monday, Suga said that Tokyo seeks to put an end to a territorial dispute with Moscow and sign a peace treaty to improve relations with Russia.

"The consistent position of our country is that the Northern Territories are the islands under the sovereignty of our country. That is why the subject to the negotiations on the peace treaty is [the issue] of the sovereignty of all the four islands," Suga said at a press conference on Wednesday.

The Kuril Islands dispute has been souring Moscow-Tokyo relations for decades and serves as the main stumbling block to signing a permanent peace treaty for the offical end of World War II.

The group of four islands, namely Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai, is collectively referred to as the Southern Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan. Russia insists that its sovereignty over the islands, which became a part of the USSR after WWII, is undisputed.

In November 2018, former Japanese Prime minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir 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. In September, Putin said that Moscow and Tokyo would make efforts to sign a peace treaty based on the 1956 declaration.