Tokyo, May 31: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin are slated to hold a bilateral summit meeting on June 29 during Putin’s official visit to Japan to attend a meet of leaders on the sidelines of G20 summit (Group of 20 nations), Moscow’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said on Friday.
According to Reuters news reports, senior political leaders and officials from both nations have held frequent dialogues in recent times to discuss and pave ways to put an end to a decades-old territorial dispute and further conclude a peace pact.
After concluding a meeting with his Japanese counterpart in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, Lavrov told reporters: “With eyes on the Russia-Japan summit meeting at the time of the G20 summit in Osaka, we made checks on the state of progress in Russia-Japan relations.”
Japan claims a sling of Moscow-controlled western Pacific islands called the Southern Kuriles in Russia and Northern Territories in Japan.
The diplomatic ties between Japan and Russia have been upset due to the territorial row over the islands chain which the Russian troops had seized at the end of World War, preventing a peace agreement between the two sides.
Lavrov has also stated dialogues with Tokyo over five joint economic activity projects over the strategic islands were proceeding at a good pace. However, he did not elaborate.