Japan and Russia will hold vice-ministerial talks Tuesday in Tokyo as part of an effort to push forward negotiations for concluding a peace treaty, which has long been thwarted by a territorial dispute over four islands off Hokkaido, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.
The Japanese team for the one-day talks will be led by Deputy Foreign Minister Toshiyuki Takano, while the Russian delegation will be headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, the ministry said.
The talks are expected to pave the way for a foreign ministerial meeting between Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka and Russia's Igor Ivanov, and eventually for summit talks between Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During the vice-ministerial meeting, Japan will propose to Russia that they negotiate the fate of all four disputed islands at the same time, reversing its earlier proposal to discuss them simultaneously but on separate tracks, according to ministry officials.
The row over the ownership of Etorofu, Kunashiri and Shikotan islands and the Habomai group of islets -- as they are known in Japan -- has prevented the two countries from concluding a peace treaty. Soviet troops seized the Southern Kurils -- as they are known in Russia -- at the end of World War II.
Whether to treat the islands as one package or two is one of the issues on the table as the 1956 Japan-Soviet joint declaration stipulates that Moscow will return Shikotan Island and the Habomai islets to Tokyo after Japan and Russia conclude a peace pact. It does not mention the fate of Etorofu and Kunashiri.