Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga hopes to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, the projected winner in the US presidential election, as soon as possible, Japanese Upper House Lawmaker Muneo Suzuki told Sputnik on Wednesday
TOKYO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th November, 2020) Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga hopes to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, the projected winner in the US presidential election, as soon as possible, Japanese Upper House Lawmaker Muneo Suzuki told Sputnik on Wednesday.
"There have been no high-level talks between Japan and Russia in a long time, due to the issues with the coronavirus disease. Therefore, Prime Minister Suga said that he would like to hold negotiations both with Joe Biden and President Putin as soon as possible," Suzuki said after he held a 10-minute discussion with Suga on Japan's relations with Moscow and Washington.
Suga, who was appointed Japanese prime minister in September, has repeatedly said that he was committed to the same policies on Russia that were pursued by his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, who had tried to resolve the bilateral territorial dispute and maintain a good and fruitful cooperation.
The Kuril Islands dispute has been souring Moscow-Tokyo relations for decades and was the main stumbling block to signing a permanent WWII peace treaty. The deal was never reached because of a disagreement over a group of four islands � Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai � that are claimed by both countries. The Kuril Islands are a chain of islands stretching through the Okhotsk Sea between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido.
In November 2018, Abe and 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. The agreement by the two leaders to use the declaration as the basis for peace negotiations spurred a series of meetings held the following year by Putin and Abe and their foreign ministers. Russia, however, has repeatedly said that the talks do not presuppose transfer of any territories to Japan.
