ASIA / RUSSO-JAPANESE RELATIONS : Cold War Lingers in Feud Over Islands

As tumultuous political and economic change swept through the Soviet Union over the last year, there was one notable Cold War holdover in Moscow’s foreign policy: a 45-year-old diplomatic stand-off with its neighbor to the east, Japan.

Tokyo has been similarly reluctant to revise its thinking about the Soviet Union, insisting that a protracted territorial dispute over a group of islands off Hokkaido must be the focal point of chilly relations.

But with the deadline fast approaching for a visit by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev--as early as next spring--pressure is mounting to make some tangible progress on the issue soon. That opportunity may arrive Tuesday, when Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze comes here for three days of talks aimed at improving the atmosphere and, presumably, laying the groundwork for the first visit by a top Soviet leader since the end of World War II.

It appears doubtful, however, that Shevardnadze will bring any major concessions that would break the stalemate over a bilateral peace treaty, which is still under negotiation 38 years after Japan settled for peace with the United States and the other Pacific War victors.

Instead, the watchword for Japan-Soviet relations is incremental change. The Soviet side agreed only recently to discuss the four islands that Japan calls the Northern Territories in periodic working-level meetings. Japan is only now modifying the language in its annual Defense White Paper, due out later this month, to tone down references to the “Soviet military threat” in the region.

“I don’t have any grounds to be optimistic on the Northern Territories issue,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified by name. Although some Soviet think-tanks have recommended a more liberal response to Japan’s territorial claim, he said, “we have not detected any concrete signs that these views have penetrated the Soviet leadership.”

Background

Animosity dates to the late 19th Century, when the two expansionist empires contested for influence in Manchuria and Korea and for territory--the islands of Sakhalin and the Kurils. Japan came out on top with a victory in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war.

The Soviet Union got revenge in 1945, however, when it violated a non-aggression pact in the final days of the war and advanced troops into Sakhalin and the southern Kurils. Japan abandoned claim to everything but four small islands in the Kuril chain closest to Hokkaido, which it says had never belonged to Russia and were never inhabited by anyone but Japanese or Ainu aborigines.

Failure to work out a formula for the return of the islands has put economic as well as political relations on hold. The Soviet Union has in recent years appealed for Japanese help in its perestroika restructuring program. But Japan has steadfastly refused to budge on that front until Moscow shows signs of relenting on the islands.

Outlook

There are no such signs. Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Rogachev said earlier this year: “The Soviet Union has no land to spare.” And the president of the Russian Republic, Boris Yeltsin, visited the disputed islands last month and declared that more Soviet citizens should settle there.

Yet there is a potential for warmer relations. Then-Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno suggested room for compromise when in May, 1989, he proposed what he called “expanded equilibrium” in “other areas” of the relationship, including economic, scientific and humanitarian exchanges.

The Soviets have made some gestures. Japanese exiles from one of the disputed islands were allowed last month to visit graves they had not seen for 45 years. And the Yomiuri newspaper reported this week that Shevardnadze had “hinted” in an interview that the Kremlin may withdraw the division of ground troops it deploys on that island “to promote detente in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Shevardnadze’s talks with Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama are expected to yield a bilateral agreement to cooperate on environmental protection, which may include research related to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

But attention will be focused on whether Shevardnadze and Nakayama cannot only set the stage for Gorbachev’s visit next year but also put the peace treaty negotiations on track so that the summit meeting will be more than ceremonial.

“We’d like Mr. Gorbachev’s visit to Japan to be a substantial occasion to make a real breakthrough in Japan-Soviet relations, in a drastic and fundamental manner,” said the Foreign Ministry official in Tokyo. “We’re prepared to find common areas where we can make progress.”