In 1875 Japan ceded to Russia the nearby island of Sakhalin in exchange for full Japanese possession of the Kurils. The islands were returned to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) by an agreement reached at the Yalta Conference during World War II (1939-1945). After the war Japan maintained a claim to the southernmost islands, and the territorial dispute still prohibits the countries from signing a peace treaty. In the early 1990s Japan increased diplomatic pressure for return of the disputed islands, which became a focus of contention between Russia and Japan. In the mid-1990s the two nations continued negotiations about the islands, while there were clashes between Russian patrol boats and Japanese fishing boats in the area. At the latest summit between the Russian and Japanese leaders on the 18th of February 2009, scant progress was made on resolving the issue. “On the territories issue, we have agreed to speed up detailed work on a creative, out-of-the-box approach to resolving it within our generation,” Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso told reporters after meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev on Sakhalin Island.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 01:33:41 +0000