Spotlight: Russia, Japan try to boost economic ties amid territory dispute stalemate

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday met with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the ongoing Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, Russia.

The two leaders discussed a broad range of cooperation issues. As to their long-held dispute over four islands in the Pacific, which is deemed to be the main roadblock toward a peace treaty between Moscow and Tokyo, the two sides agreed to continue consultations.

During his visit to the Black Sea resort of Sochi in May, Abe presented detailed ideas on implementing an eight-point plan of cooperation with Russia, which covers various spheres.

The Russian side said they had carefully reviewed those plans. Russian Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov said at the EEF that several concrete projects on bilateral cooperation will be unveiled during Putin's visit to Japan scheduled for December.

Moscow and Tokyo have held several rounds of talks on boosting bilateral cooperation and on the signing of a peace treaty, Lavrov said, adding that the results of those consultations, which Russia and Japan would continue with, will be announced during Putin's Tokyo trip.

Russia and Japan have not inked a bilateral peace treaty after World War II due to a territory row over four small islands in the Pacific -- the Southern Kurils as Russia calls them or the Northern Territories as Japan calls them.

The decades-old territorial dispute has hindered diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries.

Earlier on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this is a much more complex issue and requires longer and more expert-level efforts.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, Putin noted that a compromise on the islands was possible provided there was a "high level of trust," but he added that Russia did not "trade territories."

"We are not talking about some exchange or some sale, we are talking about finding a solution where neither of the parties would feel defeated or a loser," Putin said in the interview.

Lavrov said Tokyo has shown willingness to discuss issues related to the joint economic activity on those disputed islands, including "exchanges of people and humanitarian relations."

The two parties started evaluating each other from the standpoint of an economic partnership, which is a positive development, because in the political field, they have a lot of differences, Dmitry Streltsov, director of Oriental Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, told Xinhua.

He anticipated that Putin's visit to Japan, which has been postponed several times, would take place in December as planned.

"If there was a disruption in the relations between Moscow and Tokyo, it might be postponed indefinitely," he said. Endi