Russia’s uneasy relations with Japan have shown a marked improvement recently, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday during a meeting here with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
”People in Russia love Japan — their people, their history and its culture,” said Putin during bilateral talks held amid gala celebrations of the Russian imperial capital’s 300th anniversary, which expects to receive more than 40 heads of state.
Putin said he felt that Moscow’s relations with Tokyo began to warm when he first visited Japan for a Group of Eight (G8) summit in the summer of 2000.
”I then felt how the people of Japan view Russia,” Putin said, adding the visit served ”as a good basis for developing our economic and political relations.”
”Our meeting was absolutely honest, the way we met each other today,” Putin said.
”I think our main goal now is to give a push to the development of our relations,” he added.
The Japanese leader replied that ”all of the people of Japan” remember Putin’s 2000 visit to Okinawa.
”We understand each other,” said Koizumi, adding that he wanted to focus on Japan’s underdeveloped economic relations with Russia. As a joke, tossed out before an audience of students at a sports university, Koizumi added that Russia-Japanese relations ”will be developing through judo”.
Putin is reported to have a black belt in the Asian sport and the two leaders set side by side on a sports bench in a gymnasium watching as several top athletes, draped in white robes, performed judo movements.
Relations between Russia and Japan have been tense for decades because of a dispute over the four windswept southern Kuril islands that the Soviet army conquered from Japan in the dying days of World War II.
The two sides have signed a truce but no formal peace treaty after the war, and Japanese investment in Russia has been minimal because of the dispute. – Sapa-AFP