MOSCOW (AP) – Russia’s foreign minister warned Japan Saturday against expecting a quick breakthrough in the territorial dispute between the two nations ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s upcoming visit to Japan.
Sergey Lavrov said after talks with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida that the settlement would require a painstaking work. He added that its rendering in the media “in either a confrontational spirit or by encouraging excessive expectations of a quick progress” wouldn’t help.
The disagreement over the Pacific islands, seized by the Soviet Union in the final days of World War II, has kept the two countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending their wartime hostilities.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been pushing for progress in the dispute over the islands, called the southern Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan.
The sparsely inhabited islands lie just north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido, in an area rich in natural resources, and they also serve as a strategic vantage point for the Russian military. Last month, Japan protested after Russia announced the deployment of new anti-ship missiles on Pacific islands to the Kurils.