TOKYO, January 30. /TASS/. In negotiations with Russia, the Japanese government is still proceeding from the position according to which the peace treaty with Russia should be signed after solving the territorial problem between the two states, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said during a debate in the lower parliamentary chamber on Wednesday.
"In any way, the Japanese government will continue persistent negotiations [with the Russian side] on the basis of its consecutive position: the signing of the peace treaty after solving the territorial issue," Abe stressed.
Asked about whether the "northern territories" [the Kuril Islands - TASS] are Japan's ancestral territories at the debate in the parliament, he stressed that these territories are fully covered by Japan's sovereignty. "The northern territories are territories which have our sovereignty. This position did not change," Abe stated.
Earlier in the week, the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan reiterated about the main position of the country’s government on the southern Kuril Islands. "Japan’s government does not change its basic position that four islands are our ancestral territory," LDP Executive Acting Secretary-General Koichi Hagiuda Koichi Hagiuda said.
The negotiations
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to galvanize negotiations on the peace treaty in November last year in Singapore, then at a meeting in Buenos Aires on the sidelines of a G20 summit on December 1 the two state leaders declared the creation of a new format and assigned the foreign ministers to be in charge of its operation.
Moscow and Tokyo have negotiated for decades to develop a peace treaty on World War II results.
The main obstacle is the sovereignty of the southern part of the Kuril Islands: after the end of the war the whole archipelago was included in the Soviet Union, but Tokyo is disputing the sovereignty of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and a group of uninhabited islands which Japan calls Habomai.