Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Friday to meet in Japan on Dec. 15 in a visit that few expect to yield a breakthrough in the decades-old territorial dispute between their respective countries.
While comments by Abe and government officials did not suggest the two leaders made any significant progress on the row over Russian-administered, Japan-claimed islands off Hokkaido's east coast in their talks held on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in the city of Vladivostok, there are other incentives for the leaders to seek continued dialogue, political analysts said.
Still, the disagreement over the group of islands, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia, has prevented the two countries from signing a post-World War II peace treaty.