Japan hopes for deeper economic ties with Russia ahead of Putin meeting

PanARMENIAN.Net - Japan is hoping the lure of deeper economic ties with Russia will strengthen strategic relations in the face of a rising China, but skeptics question whether the approach will generate a breakthrough in a decades-old territorial dispute, Reuters said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a business conference in Vladivostok to discuss, among other things, closer economic cooperation in such areas as energy and technology.

The meeting at the two-day forum in the Russian port city, which begins on Friday, September 2 will be followed by Putin's visit to Japan in December, a Russian official has said. It will be Putin's first visit since Abe took office in December 2012, although Abe has been to Russia several times.

Japan has been eyeing closer ties with Russia to counter China's growing clout, as well as its interest in Russia's natural resources. In a sign of the focus on economic ties, Abe has given his trade minister Hiroshige Seko an additional portfolio in charge of economic cooperation with Russia, the main government spokesman in Tokyo said on Thursday.

Earlier attempts to schedule a visit by Putin were derailed by the 2014 events in Ukraine's Crimea region, which prompted Tokyo to join the United States and other Western countries in imposing sanctions on Moscow.

Former lawmaker Muneo Suzuki said broadening economic ties with an eye to the eventual resolution of the territorial row over islands in the western Pacific made sense because Russia's energy resources and Japan's technological expertise and investments were a good fit.

"What President Putin is hoping for is Japan's technology. If Japan's technology is sought after for the development of Russia's Far East, we should make it available," said Suzuki, who has advised Japanese prime ministers on Russian relations.

"As for Japan, we are importing oil and gas from the Middle East, which is some 10,000 km away. It would be in our national interest to procure them stably from Vladivostok or Sakhalin, which are just a stone's throw away," Suzuki told Reuters.