Tokyo's unwillingness to draw lessons from the past derails the process of getting a peace treaty with Russia, still pending since the end of World War II, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th September, 2018) Tokyo's unwillingness to draw lessons from the past derails the process of getting a peace treaty with Russia, still pending since the end of World War II, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Tokyo had submitted a note of protest via diplomatic channels to Russia over the events commemorating the end of the World War II that were organized on the South Kurils, known as Northern Territories in Japan.
"We were surprised by the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Y. Suga's statement regarding protest made to Russia over the celebrations that were held in the South Kurils to mark the 73rd anniversary of the end of the World War II ... We see the Japanese side's persistent unwillingness to draw the necessary lessons from the past as a serious obstacle to the resolution of the peace treaty issue," the ministry said in a statement.
The Russian diplomats stressed that this statement showed that Tokyo was "prone to regular losses of historical memory, forgetting the role of the militarist Japan in provoking military aggression in Asia and ignoring the results of the World War II and the characteristics of the current world order based on the UN Charter."
Russia and Japan both claim Iturup, Habomai, Kunashir and Shikotan islands. However, all of them are under Russian jurisdiction. Russia believes that the islands became part of the Soviet Union as a result of the World War II. In 1956, the Soviet Union agreed to consider returning the islands to Japan if an official post-WWII peace treaty was concluded, but none has been to date.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin's trip to Japan in December 2016, Moscow and Tokyo agreed to develop joint projects on the disputed islands.
