OREANDA-NEWS. The Japanese Foreign Ministry believes that the possible visit of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to the southern part of the Kuril Islands is contrary to the position of the Japanese government regarding these territories. This was announced on Monday at a press conference in Tokyo by Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

“This is incompatible with the position of our government”, he said in response to a request to comment on information about the planned visit of the Russian prime minister.

On July 27, Muneo Suzuki, a well-known Japanese politician who is actively involved in dialogue with Russia and is considered to be the unofficial adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Japanese-Russian relations, issued a statement that Medvedev is expected to visit Iturup Island on August 1-2 included in the southern part of the Kuril ridge.

Last time Medvedev visited Iturup in the summer of 2015. Then the Prime Minister got acquainted with the work of the local airport and the Kurilsky port point, visited the Raidovo fish processing plant and met with the participants of the Iturup All-Russian Youth Educational Forum. The visits of Russian officials to the southern part of the Kuriles often cause protests from Tokyo, which Moscow has consistently rejected.

Since the middle of the last century, Moscow and Tokyo have been intermittently negotiating a peace treaty on the outcome of the Second World War. The main obstacle to its conclusion was the question of the identity of the southern part of the Kuriles. In 1945, the entire archipelago was incorporated into the Soviet Union, but the Japanese side disputed the identity of Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and a group of currently uninhabited islands, which in Japan are called Habomai.