MOSCOW, November 30 (Itar-Tass) — The Kremlin expressed the hope that Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will visit Russia in second half of January 2013.
“We hope that the visit will take place and proceed from the assumption that it will take place in second half of January,” the president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told Itar-Tass on Friday.
“No clear dates of the visit have been named yet,” therefore there is no need to speak about the visit’s postponement.
“Earlier, after the leaders’ meeting in Vladivostok in September and at present, different variants have been discussed, for instance, November and December were named as possible dates,” he said. “As far as I know until the last moment an opportunity for making the visit in second half of January has been discussed.”
Earlier in the day Yoshihiko Noda said he delayed his visit to Moscow that was scheduled for December indefinitely.
“I have to temporarily postpone my visit to Moscow over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s health problems,” he told a news conference in Nemuro, Japan’s northern prefecture of Hokkaido.
Of late the bilateral dialogue between Moscow and Tokyo evidently advanced. The meeting between Vladimir Putin and Yoshihiko Noda on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok in September gave a fresh impetus to this.
Then the Russian leader invited Japan’s prime minister to visit Russia in 2012. Moreover, the agreement to hold the consultations of the two countries’ deputy foreign ministers that took place in October had been reached.