Japan to Host Meeting Despite Yeltsin
Japan will go ahead with plans to host an international conference on aid to countries of the former Soviet Union, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said Friday.
Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe said last weekend that Japan might scrap plans to host the October conference after Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s abrupt cancellation of a visit to Tokyo.
Yeltsin told reporters in Russia that Japan was too uncompromising in its demands for the return of four islands in the Kuril chain that were seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War II.
Japan refuses to sign a World War II peace treaty or extend major economic aid to Russia until the dispute is resolved. Miyazawa indicated this stance was unchanged.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Friday that efforts were under way to improve ties with Russia.
He said Watanabe was due to meet his Russian counterpart at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York later this month. “We would like to look to the future and not at what happened recently,” the spokesman said.
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