Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said Tuesday he will visit Moscow for two days from Jan. 16 for peace treaty negotiations with his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov.
Kono's announcement makes official the failure of Russia and Japan to meet the end-of-2000 goal they set for concluding a peace treaty. The goal for the treaty, which requires the resolution of a territorial dispute over islands north of Hokkaido, was stated in a bilateral agreement signed in 1997 in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia.
"Both sides tried hard to fulfill the Krasnoyarsk agreement, but we could not reach an agreement on the sovereignty issue of the four (disputed) islands by the end of 2000," Kono said.