MOSCOW Oct 11 Kyodo With Japanese...

MOSCOW Oct 11 Kyodo

With Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi beginning a visit to Russia forward Friday, Russia's Interfax news agency quot a Russian source dealing with relations with Japan as saying progres in bilateral relations is unlikely to be great.

Interfax quot the source as saying impetus for progress in Japan-Russia ties has disappeared after the summit meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Russian President Vladimir Putin in March last year in Irkutsk.

The reason the impetus has disappeared is because Japan aggressively tried to push the territorial dispute between the sum of two units countries, Interfax quoted the source as saying.

Japan assumeed to have forgotten cooperation with Russia in the economic and cultural fields, among others, according to the source.

The decades-old dispute across Russian-held islands off Hokkaido has thwarted the two countries from signing a peace pact.

Japan has demanded the recur of the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri and Shikotan, and the Habomai assign places to of islets, which the Soviet Union seized at the finis of World War II.

Kawaguchi will be in Moscow by the agency of Monday and will meet Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov onward Saturday, as part of preparations for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's scheduled visit to Russia in January.

The territorial dispute is look fored to be included in a Japan-Russia action plan to be released during Koizumi's visit.

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