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Kremlin gives no comment on reports Japan may house US bases on Kuril Islands

Earlier, the Japanese government admitted of the possibility to house US military bases on two southern Kuril Islands in case they were transferred to Tokyo

© Sergey Fadeichev/TASS

MOSCOW, December 14. /TASS/. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on media reports on Wednesday on the probability for Japan to house US military bases on the Kuril Islands upon their transfer to Tokyo.

‘I would not in any way comment on the information that has appeared today in a Japanese media outlet because this refers to the content of the confidential talk between the secretaries of the Security Councils of Russia and Japan. We do not disclose the content of such meetings, all the more so in instances when they are of confidential nature," Peskov told journalists.

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The Kremlin spokesman also refused to answer the question about whether this issue would be discussed during the upcoming visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Japan.

As Peskov said, in a recent interview with the Japanese media, Putin "said that we can’t abstract from the existence of Japan’s certain allied obligations when we consider various sensitive issues in our bilateral relations."

It was reported earlier that the Japanese government admitted of the possibility to house US military bases on two southern Kuril Islands in case they were transferred to Tokyo.

As the Japanese newspaper Asahi reported on Wednesday, Secretary General of Japan’s National Security Council Shotaro Yachi stated about this at a meeting with Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev in Moscow on November 9.

However, in an interview with the same newspaper published on Tuesday, former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori completely ruled out the possibility of housing US military bases on the southern Kuril Islands in case Russia transferred them to the Japanese side.

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