Asia-Pacific

New peace treaty with Japan with new level of co-op

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-02-17 22:32

MOSCOW - A long-awaited peace treaty between Russia and Japan must not be related only to their territorial dispute, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday.

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"A Russia-Japan peace treaty must mark the new level of cooperation with Japan in politics, trade, economy, innovations, technologies and so on," Alexander Lukashevich said.

He stressed that the treaty should highlight readiness of the two parties to jointly resolve the regional and global problems, especially those of security in Asia-Pacific region.

Russia and Japan have long been at odds over the sovereignty of four Pacific islands, which are called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia. The disputes have blocked a peace treaty between the two countries since the end of World War II.

Moscow once offered to sign a friendship and cooperation treaty with Tokyo instead of a full-scale peace treaty but Japan rejected the initiative.

Meanwhile, Lukashevich stressed that Russian officials would keep visiting the disputed Southern Kurils Islands and ruled out any possibility of talks between the two sides over the islands.

The government has set a task to equalize the living conditions on the islands with other Russian regions by 2015, Lukashevich said.