Soviets, Japanese See Hope of Ending Islands Dispute : Diplomacy: A special working group will try to make progress. A Moscow spokesman talks of satisfying public opinion on both sides.

The Japanese and the Soviets said Wednesday that they see their first real chance of settling a dispute that has bedeviled their relations for four decades--the diplomatic stalemate over the ownership of four islands seized by the Soviet Union from Japan at the end of World War II.

Although Soviet officials were notably more upbeat about prospects for an agreement on the future of the southern Kurils, Japan’s tough negotiators were saying they see “a clear, emerging possibility of a resolution.”

Japanese diplomats, accustomed to calculating Soviet movement on what Japanese call the Northern Territories issue by weighing each word of every speech and communique, said they found “no fundamental shift” during the visit of Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama to Moscow this week.

But what Japanese officials wanted to stress, lest anyone conclude that there was no progress, was that they finally see the possibility of a settlement after the improvement in relations between Moscow and Tokyo this year.

“On the territorial issue, there is no real change--none really,” a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official commented after the talks. “But our whole relationship has changed in the months since the collapse of the putsch here. With the conservative forces defeated, there are now possibilities, chances and hopes we did not have before. Those give grounds for optimism.”

Vitaly I. Churkin, the chief Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that after Nakayama’s talks here, Moscow hoped that the Kurils dispute would be resolved quickly. “We want to settle this problem as soon as possible,” he said. “We consider abnormal the situation when, approximately 50 years after the war, we still have no treaty on peace with this major neighbor of ours.”

The future of the disputed islands--Shikotan, Etorofu, Kunashiri and the Habomai group, located off Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido--will now be discussed by a special Soviet-Japanese working group in an effort to speed progress on the issue and remove it as an obstacle to overall relations.

The appointment of a deputy foreign minister from Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin’s government to head the Soviet negotiating team was seen by Japanese officials as a further step to ensure a quick resolution by involving Yeltsin as well as Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Yeltsin has appeared readier in recent months to make the only deal that Tokyo will accept--return of the islands. His planned trip to Japan, probably in early 1992, could bring the two countries close to a solution, Russian officials predicted on Wednesday.

“I have never counted myself among the optimists,” another Japanese diplomat, also a specialist on the Soviet Union, commented after Nakayama met both Yeltsin and Gorbachev. “But finally there are ideas of what may be possible.”

After refusing for many years to discuss the issue of the islands, arguing that postwar borders could not be changed and that Moscow’s legal and historical claims were superior, Soviet officials appeared during the Nakayama visit to suggest that the main problem now is persuading the Russian public to accept Japanese control of them.

“The crux of the matter is not to find a magic formula,” Churkin commented. “The crux of the matter is to find such a solution that will be acceptable to the publics of both states.”

The islands’ 24,000 residents voted overwhelmingly in March against Japan’s taking over, and a campaign has been building in the region against what is being billed as “a betrayal of the motherland.”

“This is an extremely sensitive, extremely delicate question, and I think that, precisely because of its impact on public opinion, it will prove very difficult to resolve,” the Japanese Foreign Ministry official said. He declined to discuss recent suggestions in Japan of allowing Soviet citizens to remain as permanent residents on the islands or financing their repatriation with compensation for their property.

Japan is eager “not to repeat the tragedy” of 1945 when 16,000 of its people were deported by the Soviet Union, the official said.

Part of Moscow’s strategy clearly is to encourage Tokyo to extend Japanese economic and cultural reach into the Soviet Far East and particularly to the islands. It wants not only trade and investments but also hopes that Japanese dynamism will spread to the region.

Moscow announced Monday that it will immediately begin reducing its military forces on the islands, about 7,000 to 8,000 troops, by one-third, and said it has agreed with Tokyo to scrap visa restrictions on travel between Japan and the islands.

Relations between the two countries improved significantly with Japan’s decision this month to end its long link between economic and political ties by granting $2.5 billion in aid to Moscow to help underwrite its reforms.

Churkin said the improvement had begun even earlier with Gorbachev’s visit to Japan in April.

Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this report.