Russia Keen To Sign Peace Treaty with Japan

Russia President Vladimir Putin is interested in signing a peace treaty with Japan on the basis of the 1956 Declaration. The agreement came into the spotlight after Russsian President talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday.

“Naturally, we discussed the outlook for concluding a peace treaty,” Putin replied. “We reaffirmed our interest in signing this document.”

“At the meeting in Singapore (in November 2018) we agreed to proceed with the negotiating process on the basis of the joint declaration the Soviet Union and Japan signed in 1956, which above all envisages the conclusion of a peace treaty,” Putin recalled.

He heeded that at Tuesday’s meeting the two sides “spent a lot of time” on the point of the peace treaty. The two countries’ foreign ministers were appointed to coordinate this task. The first round of meetings, he said, was held in Moscow on January 14. The outcomes of the negotiations in the Kremlin were communicated to the Russian and Japanese leaders.

“Let me point out that painstaking work is ahead for us to create conditions for achieving mutually acceptable solutions,” Putin responded. “The task is to ensure long-term and all-round development of Russian-Japanese relations at the proper level.”

He pointed out that a future solution the moderators were yet to submit “should be acceptable to the people of Russia and Japan and supported by the public at large in both countries.”

For the time being the parties consented to step up joint economic activity on the South Kuril islands in the five authorized fields: aquaculture, greenhouse farming, wind energy, tourism, and garbage processing.

Russian President Putin thanked Abe and all other participants in the negotiations for what he described as “useful and meaningful exchange of opinion.”

“I believe that this visit will certainly benefit bilateral relations and take us closer to resolving the key issues of our cooperation,” Putin concluded.

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