Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held intensive talks Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin on territorial issues and said he wanted to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations on the disputed islands off Hokkaido when Putin visits Japan next month.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting in Lima, Abe said he "has come to see a path toward resolution" of what he referred to as the "peace treaty issue," a decades-old territorial dispute that has prevented the two countries from concluding a post-World War II peace treaty.
During the 70-minute meeting on the sidelines of a Pacific Rim summit in the Peruvian capital, Abe and Putin spent half the time discussing the territorial issue alone with their interpreters, according to a senior Japanese official.