Russian deputy foreign minister Aleksandr Losyukov indicated Wednesday that his country was prepared to discuss the protracted territorial dispute with Japan based on the joint declaration of 1956, in which Japan and the then Soviet Union clearly agreed that two of the four disputed islands would be returned.
His remarks, made during an interview with Kyodo News, were taken by observers to indicate that Moscow is keen on resolving the decades-old row through an agreement to return two of the four islands: Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai islets.
However, Losyukov, the deputy minister in charge of the Asia-Pacific region, added that as a condition of the deal, Japan would have to agree to the scrapping of the 1993 Tokyo Declaration signed between then Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, which names the four islands as the object of the dispute.
Scrapping that agreement would effectively nullify Tokyo's stated desire to have Shikotan and Habomai, cited in the 1956 joint declaration, returned. The fate of the remaining two islands would then be discussed at a later date, the observers added.