TOKYO: Russia and Japan have perfect chances to take their cooperation in eastern Siberia and the Far East to a new level in 2015 if they set up the so-called Eurasian corridor, MP Yukio Hatoyama, an important figure in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said.
“This concept is very topical in spite of all the current difficulties,” said Hatoyama who has more than once occupied important governmental positions throughout his political career.
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He is president of the Japan-Russia Society, which unites the activists of different political forces, as well as large and medium-sized businesses.
“The concept of the Eurasian corridor is a major project of a fundamentally new development of the Trans-Siberian route from Europe to Vladivostok,” Hatoyama said. “It envisions not only a higher level of cargo haulage and development of natural resources (in the adjoining territories), but also the founding of up-to-date populated localities based on the utilization of highly advanced technologies and rationalized consumption of energy.”
“Japanese businesses are ready to take the most active part in developing the eastern section of the Eurasian corridor,” he said. “All the more that Russia’s current difficulties are provisional, I think.”
Hatoyama mentioned his visit to Moscow in October and his meetings with top executives of the Russian Railways state corporation, in the course of which agreement on promotion of the concept was reached.
He admitted that the outgoing year had been marked by difficulties in Japanese-Russian relation.
“The crisis around Ukraine wielded a heavy impact on them, as Japan was compelled to coordinate its positions with the US and the EU but Shinzo Abe’s government put maximum effort into making the measures, which this country adopted in cooperation with the West, as moderate as possible,” Hatoyama said.
