TOKYO Russia and Japan on Tuesday agreed to keep trying to resolve a territorial row that has kept them from signing a peace treaty formally ending World War Two, but chances of meeting a year-end deadline looked slimmer than ever.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Russian President Vladimir Putin put a brave face on their failure to resolve the row during a final round of talks on Tuesday and stressed the improvement in all other areas of their once chilly relationship.
"We agreed to keep discussing (the row) in order to sign a peace treaty upon solving the issue of the ownership of the four islands," Mori told a joint news conference, adding that it was not time to talk about setting a new deadline.
The dispute over four tiny Russian-held islands that Japan wants back is the sole obstacle to a treaty. Soviet troops seized the islands, located off Japan's main northern Island of Hokkaido, at the end of the war in 1945.
Their economic value is limited and strategic importance debatable.
But Russia fears a nationalist backlash if it returns the islands.
Japan wants them back as a matter of national pride.
Experts have said chances of meeting the deadline to clinch the elusive peace pact by the end of 2000 are slim.
Putin, who arrived in Tokyo on Sunday, would not be pressed on the question of when an agreement might be sealed.
"My view is that what is important is not a deadline, but for both sides to have the goodwill to resolve this difficult problem," Putin said.
"Both Japan and Russia have that goodwill." It was a theme echoed by Mori. "We have no problems in our bilateral relations except the territorial issue," Mori said.
Putin touted recent improvements in two-way ties and said the rapprochement begun by his predecessor Boris Yeltsin and Japan's then-premier Ryutaro Hashimoto had already yielded more results in three years than the previous 50 years of Cold War hostility.
"Russia and Japan begin the new millennium on a fundamentally new footing.
..as strategic partners," he said.
"It is true we have not succeeded in concluding a peace treaty, but I consider it is very important and positive that our two countries accept that a problem exists. We will continue dialog," Putin added.
Putin has been trying to shift the debate away from the islands row towards economic issues and bilateral trade.
The two leaders signed a parcel of documents pledging closer economic cooperation in a variety of areas, including projects on piping Russian gas and electricity to Japan and on improving transport infrastructure in Siberia and the Russian Far East.
(Reuter)