Better Russia-Japan ties possible without Kurils resolution: Koizumi
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-14 10:17

Resolving a 60-year-old row over four disputed Pacific islands would significantly boost ties between Japan and Russia, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said in an interview.

But the Japanese leader noted that a resolution on the four southernmost Kuril islands was not a precondition for improving bilateral relations, in an interview on Russian television a week ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's planned visit to Tokyo.

"I am not saying that we should not develop bilateral relations before the territorial problem is sorted out," Koizumi told Rossia, Russia's second public television channel.

He added that resolving the row over the four islands -- the Kuril chain separates the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean and lie between Russia's Kamchatka peninsula and the Japanese island of Hokkaido -- would "open the way to a tremendous strengthening of relations."

"In principle, I am optimistic, but not to the extent of hoping to solve this question during a single meeting.

"Obviously, one would like this meeting (with Putin) to allow things to move forward a step or two," he added.

Extensive negotiations between Moscow and Tokyo since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 have failed to resolve the Kuril dispute.

The Soviet army seized the islands after Japan's capitulation in World War II and the dispute has prevented Russia and Japan signing a peace treaty formally ending hostilities.

Earlier this year, Putin had to scrap plans for a visit to Tokyo in February after a diplomatic dispute between the two sides.

Russia offered to hand over two of the islands but Japan insisted on all four islands in return for a promise not to expel Russian inhabitants.