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Japanese FM to Visit Russia for Peace Treaty Impulse
Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono will visit Moscow in early December to work out "new measures " to boost the Russian-Japanese talks on concluding a peace treaty after World War II, Russian diplomatic sources said November 26.
Before Kono's visit, Kazuhiko Togo, director of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's European and Oceania Department, will possibly visit Russia next week for preparations for the minister's trip.
The Japanese foreign minister will fly to Moscow right after a cabinet reshuffle, which Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori plans to carry out early next month, said the sources.
If positive progress is achieved at diplomatic talks during Kono's tour, the Japanese prime minister will possibly go to Russia even this year, a Japanese government spokesman said earlier in the day.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mori met in Brunei, a Southeast Asian country, in mid-November at the informal summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and agreed to continue the peace pact dialogue in the Russian Far East city of Irkutsk.
Mori is ready to go there at any time but under the condition that "at least any shift' is registered at talks on a peace treaty and on the problem of sovereignty over the South Kuriles, the spokesman said.
Friday, General Secretary of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party Hiromu Nonaka told a Tokyo TV station that Mori may visit Russia at the end of this year or in early 2001 to step up negotiations with Moscow over concluding a peace treaty.
Former Russian and Japanese leaders Boris Yeltsin and Ryutaro Hashimoto agreed at their unofficial meeting in the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk in 1997 to make maximum efforts for signing a bilateral peace agreement.
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