MOSCOW: The first round of the Russian-Japanese consultations on joint economic activities on the southern Kuril Islands will be held in Tokyo on Saturday. Taking part in them will be Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Igor Morgulov, and his Japanese counterpart, Takeo Akiba. Tokyo is expected to offer Moscow a plan for cooperation in medicine, fisheries and tourism. According to the Kyodo news agency, the issue at hand is, in particular, efforts to create the necessary infrastructure on the southern Kuril Islands and modernize the existing one using advanced Japanese technologies. Besides, the possibility of creating a system, within which Japanese experts will be able to provide remote medical services to the islands’ residents, is considered. To develop cooperation in fisheries and seafood production, Japan wants to propose to conduct a joint study of the Russian islands’ water area. This will help receive complete information about the resource base in fishing areas and explore places suitable for breeding fish. As for tourism, the Japanese side favors organizing tours on cruise vessels in this region and joint development of port facilities and hotels.
In the run-up to the first round of consultations, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, noted that Moscow is ready to study Tokyo’s proposals on joint economic activities on the southern Kuril Islands, but any projects should not contradict Russia’s legislation. Japanese Foreign Minister, Fumio Kishida, told a news conference on Friday that the results of the talks will be a prologue to the upcoming March 20 “two plus two” meeting that will involve the two countries’ foreign and defense ministers. “Relying on the results of the upcoming consultations at the level of the Japanese and Russian deputy foreign ministers, we will discuss the joint economic activities, which sets the goal of making progress in the issue of signing a peace treaty,” he said.
