Japan is getting ready for a top-level meeting between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok during the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) scheduled to be held in September, Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Takeo Mori said on Wednesday ahead of the meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Ryabkov.
"We held a fruitful meeting between Prime Minister Abe and President Putin in May, and now we are getting ready for a meeting between our countries’ leaders at the EEF," he said.
The two leaders last met in late May 2018. Abe is a regular participant in the Vladivostok forum.Japan and Russia should tackle a number of international issues, including the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, together, Ryabkov said.
"We need to focus on the current challenges, analyze the situation and find solutions to such problems as the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," he said. Ryabkov also stressed that Russia is ready for active interaction with Japan on regional issues, considering that the two countries are neighbors.
The two countries’ senior diplomats are holding the ninth round of the strategic dialogue consultations in Tokyo discussing global and regional security issues. The previous such meeting took place in Moscow last August.
Russia and Japan have been in talks to sign a peace treaty since the middle of last century. The main stumbling block to this is the issue of the ownership of the Southern Kuril Islands. After the end of World War II the Kuril Islands were incorporated into the Soviet Union. However, the ownership of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan Islands and the Habomai Islands is challenged by Japan. In 1956, the Soviet Union and Japan signed a joint declaration on ceasing the state of war, however no peace treaty has been signed until now. Moscow has stated on numerous occasions that Russia’s sovereignty over the islands could not be questioned.