Foreign Minister Yohei Kono and his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov agreed during talks here Friday to hammer out details of a new plan that would propel the two sides toward a peace treaty by sorting out a decades-old territorial dispute.
The two foreign ministers said they would strive for progress by the yearend and that they would meet again if circumstances required.
After the meeting, Ivanov said the two sides agreed to honor existing declarations committing Tokyo and Moscow to end the dispute.
Kono and Ivanov reaffirmed the effectiveness of a bilateral joint declaration of October 1956, in which the then Soviet Union agreed to return Shikotan and the Habomai islets to Japan following conclusion of the peace treaty, Japanese officials said.