Japan Foreign Relations Ussr

The Pentagon has delayed awarding millions of dollars in contracts to Toshiba Corp. while Japan investigates charges that the company sold secret high-tech equipment to the Soviets for building quieter submarines, officials said Tuesday. Among the Toshiba contracts jeopardized by the action is the proposed purchase of 90,000 laptop computers for the Air Force valued at $100 million. The company, responding to U.S.

Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe for the first time Saturday spelled out a compromise acceptable to Japan that would end a territorial dispute with Russia and open the door to "trillions of yen" worth of Japanese aid. One trillion yen is worth $7.5 billion.

Twelve North Korean-flagged, Japanese-owned fishing vessels and their crewmen on Friday left the Soviet port of Nakhodka, where they had been held for two months for poaching Soviet salmon, the Foreign Ministry said. The boats were heading for North Korea's port of Hungnam. In Moscow, the Soviet news agency Tass said the ships' captains estimated their vessels were carrying 500 tons of fish, worth about $8 million.

At his first press conference as Japanese prime minister, Kiichi Miyazawa spent nearly an hour and a half Wednesday discussing everything from economics and foreign policy to morality with a spontaneity and frankness that won accolades from political observers. Miyazawa raised serious questions, for example, about the role that human rights issues should play in foreign policy.

Fifty million Japanese have now signed a petition calling on Moscow to return a group of small islands the Soviet Union has held since 1945, Kyodo news agency said Wednesday. The signatures on the petition, which was started in 1965, represent about 40% of Japan's 123 million people. The dispute over who should rule the islands off northern Japan has prevented Tokyo and Moscow from signing a treaty formally ending World War II hostilities.

Japanese businessmen are extending a tentative lifeline to the ailing Soviet economy even though their government has avoided wider ties pending resolution of a long-standing territorial dispute. A number of companies have signed contracts or worked behind the scenes to help the Soviets in their herculean task of converting to a market-oriented economy.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will urge President Bush to refrain from taking unilateral military action and seek a peaceful solution to the Middle East crisis when the two leaders meet Sunday in Helsinki, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said here Friday.

The Soviet Union and Japan on Wednesday issued their first joint communique on an international issue in half a century and agreed to regular consultations on political and military affairs. The two steps promised to broaden what officials of both nations have recognized as a narrow and strained relationship. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze proposed, also for the first time, taking certain confidence-building measures to allay Japanese fear of Soviet military power.

The Soviet Union on Wednesday is likely to win observer status to the world trade body GATT--a first step to full membership, sources said Monday. The decision will be made by the ruling council of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which sets rules for 90 percent of world trade. President Bush supports moves to integrate the Soviet Union into the world economy.

Japan will accept nothing less than Soviet recognition of its sovereignty over all four northern islands seized by Moscow after World War II as the price for economic aid and better relations when President Mikhail S. Gorbachev visits this month, a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday night.

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."

The Soviet Union announced Monday that it is cutting its military forces by almost a third on the four disputed Kuril Islands in a move to help resolve the islands' future, conclude a peace treaty with Japan and clear the way for broader economic cooperation. At the opening of three days of talks here, Soviet Foreign Minister Boris D.

JAPAN. Russia and Japan are moving toward settlement of a 46-year-old territorial dispute, but the Soviet republic expects billions of dollars in return. The conflict over several small islands off northern Japan, seized by the Soviets at the end of World War II, has blocked a peace treaty and has delayed aid from Tokyo. Ruslan Khasbulatov, acting Speaker of the Russian Federation Parliament, is in Japan for talks to end the stalemate. FRANCE. Soviet Defense Minister Yevgeny I.

Japan's Kyodo News Service reported that Grigory Yavlinsky, vice chairman of the Soviet State Council's economic management committee, has endorsed the return to Japan of several Soviet-held islands in the Kurils that were seized in the waning days of World War II. He was quoted by Kyodo as saying that an 1855 treaty between the two countries "could be a moral and legal starting point to resolve the issue."

The breakup of the Soviet Union may create business opportunities in Russia and other republics over the long term, but Japanese investors say that for the time being political instability has actually increased the risks of making an investment. "Over the short term there is going to be a lot of confusion," said Takashi Murakami, head of the economic studies division of the Japan Assn.

Pope John Paul II, who embarked in high spirits on a swing through Eastern Europe a week ago, grimly returned home Tuesday, praising former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and praying that liberalizing reforms in the Soviet Union survive his fall. "Faced with the news that comes from the Soviet Union, our prayers become even more intense to ask God that that great country may be spared further tragedy.

The Soviet Union and Japan agreed Wednesday on tentative dates for President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's historic visit to Japan but failed to come any closer to resolving the key issue that still divides them--the fate of four small islands off Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido.

At his first press conference as Japanese prime minister, Kiichi Miyazawa spent nearly an hour and a half Wednesday discussing everything from economics and foreign policy to morality with a spontaneity and frankness that won accolades from political observers. Miyazawa raised serious questions, for example, about the role that human rights issues should play in foreign policy.

GERMANY Chancellor Helmut Kohl scheduled a crisis meeting for today with his government and major political parties. Kohl, a close ally of Gorbachev, warned the new Soviet leadership that aid is contingent on continued democratization and reform. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 Germans marched in support of Gorbachev in scattered demonstrations. BRITAIN Prime Minister John Major condemned Gorbachev's ouster as a "very ominous development" and swiftly froze aid to the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev's fall from power was greeted with only a muted official response from the Japanese government. Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu declined to comment, and Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama said in a press conference only that "we hope from the heart that there will be no impact on Gorbachev's policy of glasnost and perestroika. " Japanese officials said they would continue efforts to sign a peace treaty that would include the return to Japan of four islands, now under dispute, that were occupied by the Soviets at the end of World War II. Privately, though, Japanese officials expressed pessimism over the potential for bringing the Soviet Union into the world economy.