The Japanese heard from Putin what they wanted to hear.
Yesterday, during a working visit in Tokyo, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took part in a dozen meetings. Throughout the visit, he tried to deal exclusively with the economic issues within his competence, but on a couple of occasions he could not help but go beyond. This was the case primarily because the Japanese couldn't pretend the whole time that there are issues in relations with Russia, which worry them more than the territorial issue. However, this did not prevent Putin from consolidating bilateral economic cooperation by signing an important agreement in the nuclear energy field, and making a contribution to humanitarian contacts by presenting his book about Judo to the Japanese public. But a bad aftertaste lingered...
Putin's visit to Japan caused an uproar among the leading Japanese politicians. In order to speak for half an hour with "friend Vladimir," former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori interrupted his tour in Africa, and rushed back to Tokyo, although from Africa he was supposed to fly to Dublin.
After that, another former Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, had the honour of meeting Russia's former head of state. He was followed, on Putin's itinerary of bilateral meetings, by the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Itiro Odzava. Finally, at 5 p.m., Prime Minister Taro Aso's turn came to receive Putin, and their conversation was drawn out (Aso is quite likely to lose his position after the forthcoming parliamentary elections).
The Russian prime minister's visit attracted so much attention for a reason. In the last few months, Japanese politicians have revived their hope for some progress in resolving the territorial issue. Nobody knows what exactly to expect.
Recently, a high-ranking Japanese diplomat made a proposal to divide the four islands in half in terms of square area. In other words, Japan will get Kunashir, Habomai, Shikotan, and a quarter of Iturup, while Russia will receive three quarters of Iturup. However, the Japanese Foreign Ministry immediately reprimanded this diplomat, and announced that Tokyo's stand has remained unchanged: "all four islands have been Japan's territory since times immemorial."
This simple "diplomatic probing" only confirms that Tokyo is waiting with interest for Moscow's response. According to Tokyo's optimistic forecast, it should come during Medvedev and Aso's meeting at the G8 July summit in Italy.
At the final news conference after long talks, an exacting Japanese journalist from the Nikkei newspaper asked Aso to quote what words he exchanged with Putin on the territorial issue.
"I realised that Putin is eager to settle the issue," Aso said. One could judge by his face that he was really pleased with this.
A look at Putin's face made it clear that he did not want his true reaction to be seen.
One more Japanese journalist had no choice but to ask bluntly about Putin's attitude to the idea to divide the islands by half of the square area.
Putin replied: "There are different approaches to this issue in Russia, too, but I would not like to express or analyse them now. The main point is to listen to the part of Russian society that wants to see the issue resolved.
"We are developing economic cooperation to create the conditions for the signing of a peace treaty. Russia is ready to discuss this issue. The Japanese Prime Minister and President Medvedev agreed to meet at the G8 summit in Italy in July. They are going to discuss the peace treaty among other things. I think that all variants of resolving the issue, including the one you mentioned, will be discussed at this meeting."
It seemed that by and large, the Japanese have heard from Putin what they wanted to hear.
It is only natural that the absence of a peace treaty did not influence the economic results of the visit. Hundreds of businessmen, who gathered yesterday at the Russian-Japanese business forum, are very interested in the continued growth of bilateral trade (in the last four years it has increased three-fold to reach $30 billion).
Having told his audience about the prospects of bilateral cooperation in transportation, the processing of raw materials, agriculture, pipeline construction, auto manufacturing, and the Sochi Olympics development, Putin took part in signing a number of interbank and inter-government agreements, the most important of which was the agreement on cooperation in nuclear energy. This document will allow Russia to increase supplies of low-enriched uranium to Japan, and develop with it cooperation in the nuclear fuel cycle, as well as in geological prospecting for and production of uranium on Russian territory, and in third countries, for instance, in Mongolia. This agreement is expected to produce contracts worth billions of dollars.
Yesterday was crowned with the presentation of the book "Learning Judo with Vladimir Putin" in Japanese by the prime minister and his good friend, Olympic champion in Judo Yasuhiro Yamasita.
Yamasita seems to be Putin's only Japanese friend who is fighting successfully, but not for the islands.
(To be continued - pp.4,6)
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The Kurile Islands are an important part of the Yalta system.
Dotting the "i's"...
When asked a direct question about Russia's willingness to consider mutually acceptable variants in resolving the territorial issue in an interview with Japanese journalists several days ago, Putin said: "The art of politics lies in a search for acceptable compromise." This particular search has been going on for almost 20 years now.
Mikhail Gorbachev admitted the existence of the territorial issue, while then President Boris Yeltsin and the then Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev all but gave the islands to Japan in the early 1990s. Today, the authorities have adopted a much more cautious and balanced approach, but there is no answer to this difficult question.
The trouble is that in the last few years, the question was reduced, albeit behind the scenes, to bargaining over Russia's willingness to give Japan all four islands, or maybe just two. Feeling this attitude, the Japanese do not stop bargaining. Now, at a semi-official level, Tokyo came up with the idea of splitting the islands by half of the square area, which means that Russia will only keep three quarters of Iturup.
Speaking during the military parade on Red Square on May 9, President Dmitry Medvedev said: "Defending the homeland is our sacred duty, a moral principle for all generations." This fully applies to the Kurile Islands, the current status of which is also a result of WWII, a part of the Yalta system, which is the source of many provisions of current world order.
Alexander Latyshev