Japanese PM to visit Russia

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will pay an official visit to Russia to resolve the remaining tensions between Moscow and Tokyo, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday. Putin, who earlier in the week held a bilateral meeting with Noda during the 2012 APEC summit in Vladivostok, said a separate meeting is needed to discuss unresolved issues. "We are interested in developing relations with Japan and we want to conclude all the problems that we inherited from the past. We spoke about what we can do in the nearest future," Putin said at the summit’s concluding news conference. "We have agreed that the Japanese prime minister will pay a visit to Russia, where we can discuss these problems in more details, in a calm situation, outside the framework of the summit," Putin said. Russia-Japan relations have been overshadowed by a long-running territorial dispute over the Kuril islands in the north Pacific. The row over the islands - which Russia calls the Southern Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories - has prevented Tokyo and Moscow from signing a permanent peace treaty following the end of World War II.