"I’ve met with President Putin 23 times already. I always feel that I can have a heart-to-heart talk with him. He is dear to me as a partner, and we can discuss any issues, including the most complicated and urgent ones, like for example, conclusion of the peace treaty," the Japanese PM told the Tass news agency.
Abe added that he expects to meet with Putin during the G20 summit in Argentina, which is scheduled for late November-early December. According to the Japanese prime minister, he also plans to visit Russia early next year to hold talks with Putin, after which, as Abe said, the Russian leader will be expected to go to Japan for the G20 summit in June.
At a meeting in Singapore on November 14, Putin and Abe had agreed to beef up Russian-Japanese peace treaty talks based on the 1956 Joint Declaration, in which Moscow had expressed readiness to hand Shikotan Island and a group of small uninhabited islands of the Lesser Kuril Chain (called Habomai in Japan) over to Tokyo as a gesture of goodwill.
The Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration on ending the state of war between the two countries and restoring diplomatic and consular relations was signed in Moscow on October 19, 1956. Article 9 of the document says that the Soviet government agreed to hand over Shikotan Island and several small uninhabited islands of the Lesser Kuril Chain to Japan provided that their actual transfer to Tokyo’s control would happen after a peace treaty was concluded. The two states ratified the Declaration on December 8, 1956.
However, after Japan and the United States had signed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security in 1960, the Soviet Union withdrew its obligation to hand over the islands. A Soviet government’s memorandum dated January 27, 1960, said that those islands would only be handed over to Japan if all foreign troops were pulled out of the country.