MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Moscow is urging Tokyo to take measures to prevent aggressive actions against Russian diplomatic missions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Wednesday.
She stressed that the two-day events in Japan on February 6-7, timed for the so-called Northern Territories Day (Japan’s customary reference to the South Kuril Islands) this year were distinguished by "an unprecedented rampage staged by the authorities-backed thugs, whose aggressive actions and yelling through loudspeakers was an attempt to upset the normal functioning of the Russian embassy in Tokyo."
"In one instance, a group of extremists, obviously acting with the connivance of the police tried to force its way into the territory of the Russian diplomatic mission, thus creating a real threat to the security of our personnel," she said.
"We are demanding that Tokyo should derive the proper conclusions from these incidents and take exhaustive measures to prevent such incidents in the future," Zakharova said.
She pointed out that in this connection a strong protest was lodged with the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
"A legitimate question arises: how does this crude violation of the universally established diplomatic rules and defiance of the national international legal obligations to guarantee the normal operation of foreign diplomatic missions correlate with Japan’s ambitions, proclaimed on major international platforms, to play a key role in global processes?" Zakharova concluded.
Since the middle of the last century, Moscow and Tokyo have been in talks about drafting a peace treaty on the basis of the results of World War II. The dispute concerning the sovereignty over the southern part of the Kuril Islands is the stumbling block. After World War II the whole archipelago was taken over by the Soviet Union, but Japan disputes sovereignty over Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and a group of uninhabited islands. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly said that Russia’s sovereignty over these islands relies on a firm international legal basis and is indisputable.