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Tokyo Wants Islands for Friendship
Taro Aso paid yesterday his first visit to Russia in capacity of Japan’s foreign minister. Moscow and Tokyo are ready to become strategic partners, but it will hardly happen before they settle territorial disputes.
The pioneering visit of Taro Aso to Moscow proved extremely intense. Together with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, he canvassed the schedule of bilateral contacts, including the meetings of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during the July summit of G8, the dates of Japan’s tours of Russia’s First Vice Premiers Sergey Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev and of Russia’s Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov as well as the dates of Russia’s tours of Japanese ministers.
But the highlight of that get-together of foreign ministers was building strategic partnership of the countries. In today’s environment, Russia and Japan need each other strategically, Taro Aso made clear during the visit. But one of the core provisions for this partnership is the progress in solving territorial clashes.
Moscow is ready to further negotiate on the South Kuril Islands, Lavrov said, conditioning the issue to progressive advance of Russia’s-Japanese relations and comprehensive improvement of mutual trust and understanding.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 04, 2007
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