The foreign minister's of Russia and Japan said Friday that they made no progress in reconciling their countries' opposing claims to four contested islands in the fertile fishing waters of the Sea of Okhotsk. But both pledged to continue working toward a solution. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura arrived in Moscow on Thursday, intent on pushing for the return of the Russian-held islands, which Moscow calls the Southern Kurils and Tokyo calls the Northern Territories. Japan says it must get the islands back before working out a formal treaty to end the nations' World War II hostilities. But a top Russian diplomat, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev, warned on the eve of the visit that an agreement was far off, saying it would likely take a long time to negotiate a treaty. Machimura's meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, was intended to pave the way for Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Japan, tentatively set for early this year. After their talks, they told reporters that no date had been set for the trip but that Lavrov would travel to Japan in March. Machimura said the two sides were sticking to their positions on the sparsely populated islands, valuable to both countries because of their rich fishing grounds. "Japan proceeds from the fact that it has sovereignty over the four islands," Machimura said through a translator. "Russia, however, holds a different position, but we intend to use all efforts to find a mutually acceptable way out of this conflict." --more 1446 Local Time 1146 GMT
