Japan hopes Abe-Putin summit helps resolve longstanding issues

Japan hopes that the upcoming summit meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week will lead to progress in resolving a long-standing territorial dispute and negotiations for a peace treaty, the top government spokesman said Thursday. "The meeting is expected to further enhance personal trust relationship between the two leaders and Japan-Russia cooperative ties, which will help the two countries make a progress in work for the dispute and the peace agreement, " Chief Cabinet Secretary told a news conference. Abe is scheduled to hold talks with Putin on Saturday on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, where he will attend the opening ceremony. It will be the fifth meeting between the two leaders since Abe took office in December 2012. The territorial dispute has prevented the two nations from concluding a peace treaty to formally end WWII and discouraged investment in Russia by Japan. The four Russian-held islands, known as the Northern Territories by Japan and the southern Kurils by Russia, lie north of Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido. In 1855, Japan and Russia signed a treaty that defined the four islands as Japanese territory. However, the Soviet Union seized the four islands on August 28, 1945, nearly two weeks after Japan's surrender in World War II, and expelled their Japanese residents. Tokyo insists the Northern Territories are not part of the Kuril chain of islands it renounced under the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with the Allies, which the Soviet Union never signed.