Kremlin surprised that Japan decided to conduct a closed press conference after talks with Lavrov
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reported in an interview on the “Sunday evening” program on television channel Russia-1 on Sunday, that the Japanese side plans to organize a closed briefing, scheduled for Monday, after talks between the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.
“This morning, Japanese diplomats sent out invitations to various media representatives on a closed briefing for tomorrow evening,” said Zakharova. She noted that questions regarding bilateral relations with Japan and negotiations on a peace treaty, either way, will be touched upon on the press conference by Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday. “However, the approach itself of first creating an environment of information the destabilizes, mislead people, throw in a couple of fakes, then close the press conference and on the same day hold a background briefing, it’s strong,” commented the spokeswoman for the MFA.
Earlier, it was reported that the Japanese representatives plans to abandon the joint press conference following the talks between Lavrov and Taro Kono.
The meeting is held on the morning of January 14th, and the issue of concluding a peace treaty between Russia and Japan. As emphasized earlier by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the key condition to solve this issue is Tokyo’s unconditional recognition of the outcome of World War II in full, including the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over the South Kuril Islands.
Earlier, Tokyo expressed the need “to gain an understanding of the residents of the South Kuril regarding the issue of “transitioning the territorial identity of the islands to Japan.” In this regard, on January 9th the Ambassador of Japan in Moscow Toyohisa Kozuki was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, where he was told that these statements grossly distort the essence of the agreements between the leaders of the two countries.