TOKYO, October 8. /TASS/. A peace agreement with Russia will not be reached without settling the territorial dispute, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Friday.

"There will be no peace agreement with Russia without resolving the territorial issue. I will pursue developing the entire complex of Japanese-Russian ties, including signing of a peace treaty," the prime minister noted.

The day before, the Japanese Prime Minister held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the phone. Following the conversation, he emphasized that a peace treaty between the two countries could be concluded only after resolving the ownership issue of the Kuril Islands’ southern part. According to Kishida, Tokyo’s stance on this issue remains unchanged. As the prime minister noted, during the talks, the sides agreed to further negotiate a peace treaty based on existing agreements, in particular, those reached in 2018 in Singapore after a meeting between Putin and then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Meanwhile, Kishida expressed his willingness to build trusting relations with the Russian leader and hold personal meetings with him.

For decades, Moscow and Tokyo have been holding consultations in order to hammer out a peace treaty as a result of World War II. The southern Kuril Islands issue remains the key sticking point. In 1945, the whole archipelago was handed over to the Soviet Union. Tokyo laid claims to Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and a group of uninhabited islands. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly stated that Moscow’s sovereignty over the islands is enshrined in international law and cannot be called into question.

In November 2018, at a meeting in Singapore, Putin and Abe agreed to boost negotiations on a peace treaty based on the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which ended war between the two countries and restored diplomatic ties. In this declaration, the USSR expressed its readiness to hand over to Japan the island of Shikotan and a number of small uninhabited islands of the Lesser Kuril Chain provided that their actual transfer will be made only after concluding a peace treaty.

The declaration was ratified by the Russian and Japanese parliaments on December 8, 1956. As the Russian side has repeatedly stated, this document clearly indicates that the ownership issue can be considered only after reaching a peace agreement.