TOKYO, July 17. /TASS/. Japan’s Foreign Ministry will not comment on the Helsinki meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump but believes Russian-US dialogue to be important, a ministry source told TASS on Tuesday.

"As for the Russian-US summit, we will refrain from commenting on other countries’ interaction with each other. However, generally speaking, Russia is an important global player and we believe that Russian-US dialogue is important for resolving serious global issues, particularly those concerning North Korea and Syria," the source said.

Meanwhile, the Japanese media have been broadly covering the meeting between Putin and Trump. In particular, the NHK TV channel said that in case Washington launched a unilateral rapprochement process with Moscow while maintaining trade disputes with its European partners, trust-based relations between the US and Europe could sour.

The first full-fledged talks between the presidents of Russia and the United States took place in Finland’s capital of Helsinki on Monday. The one-on-one meeting between Putin and Trump lasted more than two hours, later delegation members joined the presidents for a working lunch. The Russian delegation was composed of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov. The US delegation included Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. The expanded session also took about two hours.