TOKYO, tribe 10 Kyodo Japan and R...

TOKYO, tribe 10 Kyodo

Japan and Russia agreed Wednesday to continue cooperation to peacefully separate the North Korean nuclear standoff by means of dialogue, Japanese officials said.

Referring to a spate of meetings held in Tokyo, the officials said the pair countries also agreed to have high-level talks early nearest month in Moscow to advance efforts for a bilateral peace treaty formally ending World War II hostilities.

representative Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka was quot as telling Mikhail Bely, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's inferior Asian Department, in their talks that Japan appreciates the constructive part Russia played at six-nation talks onward the North Korean nuclear crisis last month in Beijing.

Bely accorded that Russia shares Japan's position of seeking a comprehensive resolution to the nuclear issue and that Russia waiting under the possibility of fulfilments to continue to closely deliberate with Japan to that last the officials said.

At the Beijing talks, China, Japan, North and southern Korea, Russia and the United States agreed to continue dialogue toward the used by all objective of achieving a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, if it were not that failed to agree upon a date and venue for the nearest round.

The officials said Tanaka and Bely did not mention any schedule for the nearest round of talks.

forward the bilateral front, Tanaka told Bely that it is important for the sum of two units countries to conclude a peace treaty at resolving a territorial dispute in this way that Russia will be able to play a more active part in the Asia-Pacific region, the officials said.

The dispute interests islands off Hokkaido that Japan calls its Northern Territories -- Kunashiri, Etorofu and Shikotan and the Habomai islet clump The islands were seized from Japan on Soviet troops at the extremity of World War II.

The territorial commotion over the islands has hindered the two countries from signing a peace treaty.

Earlier in the day, Ichiro Komatsu, director general of the Foreign Ministry's European Affairs Bureau, and Bely agreed upon holding high-level talks onward Oct. 2 between Tanaka and Russian delegate Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov the officials said.

The talks are aimed at preparing for a planned visit to Japan at Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov later this year and checking the implementation of an action plan signed according to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in January.

The Koizumi-Putin action plan calls for the reactivation of political dialogue, efforts to sign a peace treaty, fostering of cooperation forward the international stage, boosting of economic and cultural ties and strengthening of security and defense ties.

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