Japan and Russia have started their first study Tuesday to assess the potential for joint economic activities on disputed islands controlled by Moscow but claimed by Tokyo, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said.
The Japanese group, comprising 70 government officials and private-sector experts, plans to draw up a priority list of possible economic activities in such fields as fishery, tourism and health care to be carried out on the islets off Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in December to start joint activities on the isles. Tokyo hopes such a program will pave the way for settling the decades-old territorial row with Moscow.
"Japanese and Russian people can deepen mutual understanding and trust by together envisioning the future of the northern four islands," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the government's top spokesman, said at a news conference in Tokyo.
The isles of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai islet group were seized by the Soviet Union after Japan surrendered in August 1945, ending World War II. They are called the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan.
The territorial dispute has prevented the two countries from signing a postwar peace treaty.
The group, headed by Eiichi Hasegawa, a special adviser to Abe, is scheduled to visit Kunashiri, Etorofu and Shikotan for five days. It departed from Nemuro port in Hokkaido aboard a chartered ship Tuesday morning and arrived on Kunashiri Island in the afternoon.
"We will try to hammer out concrete projects after surveying the actual site through experts' eyes," Hasegawa told reporters before leaving the port.
From Russia, the governor of Sakhalin, which administers the contested isles, took part in the joint study.
Later in the day, the reception, hosted by the Russian side, was held on Kunashiri.
On Wednesday, the group is expected to begin a full survey in respective fields on the islet. It is slated to visit Etorofu on Thursday and Shikotan on Friday.
Nemuro Mayor Shunsuke Hasegawa, meanwhile, said the Japanese Foreign Ministry told him he cannot join the research group without explanation. "It's very regrettable," said Hasegawa, who hoped to visit the islands.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida only said at a press conference in Tokyo that the ministry has decided the members of the group after making arrangements with relevant parties.
Abe and Putin are likely to exchange views on the joint study during a planned meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany next month.
In 1998, Japan and Russia agreed to examine the possibility of carrying out such activities, but they failed to produce tangible results, Japanese government officials said.
