Senior Japanese and Russian officials have held talks on concluding a post-World War II peace treaty as the two countries make final arrangements for a meeting between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Vladimir Putin early next month in Russia.
A territorial spat over Russian-held, Japanese-claimed islands off Hokkaido have kept the two countries from signing the treaty for decades, but Abe hopes to make progress on the issue through talks with Putin at their proposed meeting on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Sept. 2-3.
"We hope to hold the next round of peace treaty talks without leaving an interval," Chikahito Harada, the Japanese government representative and ambassador in charge of Japan-Russia relations, told reporters Friday after the meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov in Moscow.