Japan Territories And Possessions

The leaders of Japan and Russia pledged to press on toward a peace treaty despite failing to resolve a territorial dispute that has blocked a pact for more than five decades. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori ended two days of talks in Tokyo without progress over claims to four islands off northern Japan that Russia seized at the end of World War II. The islands are known as the Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan.

So many people on the island of Kunashir have stolen slabs of metal from the local airport runway and used them to build fences and walls that the landscape seems to be wrapped in rust. The profusion of the junk metal, used instead of concrete on the old runway, captures the bleakness of life for Russians on the Kuril Islands: the casual, ubiquitous theft; the paucity of material goods because of the islands' isolation; the Soviet-era industrial trash lying everywhere.

President Bush offered a $645-million increase in American assistance to the former Soviet republics Wednesday, but Japan said that it will not provide more help until it settles a territorial dispute with Moscow left over from World War II. Opening a 47-nation conference on aid to the former Soviet Union, Bush called on the world community to show the newly independent states that it "cares about them and supports their hard struggle to build new societies on the ruins of communism."

The leaders of Japan and Russia pledged to press on toward a peace treaty despite failing to resolve a territorial dispute that has blocked a pact for more than five decades. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori ended two days of talks in Tokyo without progress over claims to four islands off northern Japan that Russia seized at the end of World War II. The islands are known as the Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan.

One day after Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin abruptly canceled his impending visit to Japan, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and other officials scrambled Thursday to put the best face on the diplomatic debacle, while public opinion was split over whom to blame. Miyazawa urged his country to "wait patiently" for Russia to sort out its domestic problems, while Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe urged people to "keep a cool head" and not respond in an "exaggerated way."

Facing a rising storm in his government and legislature over a scheduled trip to Tokyo, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Wednesday abruptly called off the visit, dashing Japanese hopes for a rapid return of territories seized 47 years ago by the Red Army. The suddenness of Yeltsin's decision left Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe reeling from a "big shock," Japan's NHK Television network reported.

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.

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.

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 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.

Russia's coast guard fired on a Japanese fishing boat within Japan's northern waters Friday and then took the boat into Russian waters, government officials in Tokyo said. No one was reported hurt in the incident, which Japan said happened about 150 miles south of a group of disputed islands seized by Soviet forces at the end of World War II. Both sides claim historical ownership of the islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories.

After a bit of derring-do with the Japanese coast guard, activists briefly planted Taiwanese and Chinese flags on a disputed island group Monday in the East China Sea. The six people who landed were part of the largest protest flotilla to sail to the uninhabited islands, known as Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese. Located 110 miles northeast of Taiwan and about 200 miles from Japan's Okinawa islands, the disputed chain lies amid rich fishing grounds.

In a historic display of unity, members of Southern California's large and politically polarized Chinese community are rallying to their ancestral land in China's territorial dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands about 9,000 miles away. On Wednesday, Chinese American leaders representing 40 groups met in Monterey Park to set aside their differences--at least for the moment--in announcing the formation of the Diaoyutai Defense Coalition of Southern California.

An activist from here drowned Thursday during a symbolic plunge in the stormy sea near the disputed Diaoyu islands after Japanese patrol boats thwarted the protesters' mission to reclaim the islands for China. While 17 Japanese coast guard and military ships encircled a rusting tanker headed for the islands, David Chan, the protest group leader, and four other men roped themselves to the ship, put on life jackets and jumped overboard.

Japan on Monday asserted its claim to a chain of disputed islands by blocking a flotilla of Taiwanese and Hong Kong demonstrators who tried to land on the stony outposts to plant the flags of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China.

Japan now seems prepared to commit as much as $2 billion in immediate aid to Russia, despite its continued insistence that Russia return four small islands seized after World War II as a precondition for substantial financial support, officials here and in Tokyo said Thursday. Japanese officials have assured Western leaders that Japan will contribute to an aid package to be announced next week at a Tokyo meeting of officials of the seven large industrialized nations.

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.

Japanese tempers flared anew Friday as a local Russian government unit reportedly agreed to lease land on one of four islands claimed by Japan to a Hong Kong company that would develop a big leisure center for Asians who want an affordable getaway. Both Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato and the Foreign Ministry's spokesman, Masamichi Hanabusa, called the reported contract "impermissible" and said Japan will officially protest to Moscow if the report is true.

One day after Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin abruptly canceled his impending visit to Japan, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and other officials scrambled Thursday to put the best face on the diplomatic debacle, while public opinion was split over whom to blame. Miyazawa urged his country to "wait patiently" for Russia to sort out its domestic problems, while Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe urged people to "keep a cool head" and not respond in an "exaggerated way."