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Tokyo’s position on end of WW2 in way of peace treaty, says Russian foreign minister

Sergei Lavrov stressed that signing the peace treaty based on the 1956 declaration means Japan’s full recognition of the results of the Second World War

MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. Tokyo’s refusal to recognize the results of the Second World War stands in the way of signing a peace treaty between Russia and Japan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in a live interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station.

"If we are talking about [signing a peace treaty] based on the 1956 declaration, it means Japan’s full recognition of the results of the Second World War. So far, our Japanese colleagues are not only not ready for that, they make it quite clear that they won’t be able to do that," the Russian foreign minister stressed.

"If Japan’s position doesn’t change, we remain in the same place we had been before. This is a refusal to recognize the outcomes of the Second World War. And recognizing the outcomes of the Second World War is a crucial first step in any talks, especially legal negotiations," Lavrov added.

At a meeting in Singapore on November 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had agreed to beef up Russian-Japanese peace treaty talks based on the 1956 Joint Declaration, in which Moscow had expressed readiness to hand Shikotan Island and a group of small uninhabited islands of the Lesser Kuril Chain (called Habomai in Japan) over to Tokyo as a gesture of goodwill.

The Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration on ending the state of war between the two countries and restoring diplomatic and consular relations was signed in Moscow on October 19, 1956. Article 9 of the document says that the Soviet government agreed to hand over Shikotan Island and several small uninhabited islands of the Lesser Kuril Chain (which Japan calls Habomai) to Japan provided that their actual transfer to Tokyo’s control would happen after a peace treaty was concluded. The two states ratified the Declaration on December 8, 1956.

However, after Japan and the United States had signed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security in 1960, the Soviet Union withdrew its obligation to hand over the islands. A Soviet government’s memorandum dated January 27, 1960, said that those islands would only be handed over to Japan if all foreign troops were pulled out of the country.