Russia interested in peace treaty with Japan on basis of 1956 Declaration

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/ Japan / Politics / / Japan

Russia interested in peace treaty with Japan on basis of 1956 Declaration - Putin

22.01.2019 19:07

Context:

Abe once offered dividing southern Kuriles to Putin

Russia has confirmed interest in signing a peace treaty with Japan on the basis of the 1956 Declaration, President Vladimir Putin said after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday.

«Naturally, we discussed the outlook for concluding a peace treaty,» Putin said. «We reaffirmed our interest in signing this document,» TASS quoted the Russian President as saying.

«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 remarked that at Tuesday’s meeting the two sides «spent much time» on the issue of the peace treaty. The two countries’ foreign ministers were commissioned to coordinate this work. The first round of negotiations, he said, was held in Moscow on January 14. The results of the negotiations in the Kremlin were reported 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 said. «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 negotiators were yet to propose «should be acceptable to the people of Russia and Japan and supported by the public at large in both countries.»

«Traditionally, priority was given to the prospects for expanding trade and investment relations; gradual growth of mutual trade in January-November last year was noted — the volume increased by 18%, reaching almost $20 bln,» Putin said.

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

Putin has said he is satisfied with Tuesday’s talks with visiting Japanese Prime Minister.

«The talks were held in a business-like and very constructive atmosphere,» he said after the negotiations.

He said it was his fourth meeting with the Japanese prime minister, with whom he maintains «close working contacts,» in the past six months. «The top-level dialogue is backed by cooperation within the Russian-Japanese intergovernmental commission, between the two countries’ security councils, foreign and defense ministries, including in the 2+2 format, and between the national parliaments,» Putin said.

«Such intense political contacts only prove that the two nations are interested in the development of cooperation on the principles of good-neighborly relations and respect to each other interests,» he said. «And we discussed the bilateral agenda with Mr. Prime Minister in this very light.»

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan and Russia set the task to promote ties in the tourism sphere and bring the mutual tourist traffic to 400 thousand, which is twice more than now.

«The number of Russians visiting Japan last year was the record one and the figure of visits is growing continuously in general. It was about 100 thousand individuals from each side last year. We set the task to attribute even greater scale to such dynamics and increase the number of mutual tourist trips twofold by 2023, to 400,000 individuals,» Abe said.

President Putin and Prime Minister Abe will have to hold still more rounds of talks to enhance an atmosphere of mutual trust, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

«There will be more such rounds. You see, there are very many contacts in the immediate plans only,» he told journalists when asked to comment on today’s talks between the two leaders.

«It is necessary to enhance the atmosphere of mutual trust,» he said. «And this atmosphere will make it possible to make progress on the key issue (of signing the peace treaty — TASS).»

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