The Prime Minister of Japan stressed that this had occurred against the background of the implementation of projects in the framework of joint economic activities in the southern part of the Kuril Islands.
Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe believes that last year the development of Japan-Russia relations reached an unprecedented level against the background of the implementation of projects in the framework of joint economic activities in the southern part of the Kuril Islands. He said this on Wednesday during a debate in Parliament.
“Over the past year, the development of relations between Japan and Russia, which takes place on the basis of agreements in Nagato (during the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Japan in 2016 – TASS), has reached an unprecedented level,” – said Abe, answering the question of the leader of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party Yukio Edano.
As examples, Abe cited the implementation of the first pilot tour to the southern part of Kuril for Japanese tourists, as well as the possibility of former Japanese residents of these islands to visit places where they were not previously allowed access.
“We will continue persistent negotiations in order to solve the territorial problem and sign a peace treaty”, – the prime minister added.
Abe also believes that there are concrete results in the negotiations with Russia on a peace treaty, and allegations of no progress are not true. “We see results and remarks that we are moving in the opposite direction in the negotiations are not true,” he said during the debate in response to the words of the chairman of the People’s Democratic Party of Japan, Yuichiro Tamaki, about the lack of progress in solving the territorial issue and the problem of the peace treaty.
However, Abe said that, according to Tokyo, “the northern territories” (as Japan calls the Russian-owned southern part of the Kuril Ridge) “extend the sovereignty of Japan” and “no change in this position. He also stressed that the position of the Japanese Government was to determine the ownership of “all four islands” (Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and the group of islands that Japan called Habomai) and to conclude a peace treaty on that basis. “We will accelerate negotiations on the basis of the 1956 Joint Declaration, resolve the territorial problem and sign a peace treaty”, concluded the Head of Government.