TOKYO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday he plans to forge ahead in bringing to fruition joint economic activities between Japan and Russia on islands central to a long-standing territorial dispute.
The Japanese leader will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss this against a backdrop of other pertinent global matters that will also have to be traversed before any significant headway is made or new cooperation, economic or otherwise, agreed upon beyond rhetoric, informed sources have said.
The territorial dispute, however, remains the main sticking point between Tokyo and Moscow, and regards four islands situated off Hokkaido.
They are believed by Japan to be a part of the Nemuro Sub-prefecture of Hokkaido and are referred to by Japan as the Northern Territories.
Russia, who administers the islands, maintains that the islands, that they refer to as the Southern Kurils, are their territory with Russian leaders repeatedly referring to the islands as a strategic region of Russia.
Abe and Putin have both stated and agreed in principle, however, that it is unusual that both countries have not signed a postwar peace treaty due to the spat, and have agreed to discuss the matter candidly going forward.
But progress in this respect has been sluggish owing to geopolitical stumbling blocks as well as the firm belief on both sides that, while the absence of a peace treaty is an anachronism, many complexities on the issue remain.
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