Russia has called in the U.S. ambassador to Moscow to receive a complaint about supposed U.S. comments supporting Japan in a 65-year-old dispute between Moscow and Tokyo over four Pacific islands that lie between them.
Moscow contends officials at the U.S. State Department and the embassy in Moscow recently backed Japan's claim in the long-running dispute over the Kuriles – a chain of small islands in the Pacific that stretch from Japan's Hokkaido island to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Soviet troops occupied the remote territory near the end of World War 2, and Russia has controlled the islands ever since.
No known public comments on the issue have come from the U.S. side this year, but the U.S. government has supported Japan's claim on the islands for more than 50 years.
Japan and Russia have never signed a treaty formally ending the last war between them. Occasional talks between the two sides over the decades have not narrowed their differences over the islands, which Japan calls its Northern Territories.
Apart from issues of national pride and sovereignty, there are rich fishing grounds near the Kuriles, and geologists are said to believe there may be rich undersea energy deposits in the area as well.
No known public comments on the issue have come from the U.S. side this year, but the U.S. government has supported Japan's claim on the islands for more than 50 years.
Japan and Russia have never signed a treaty formally ending the last war between them. Occasional talks between the two sides over the decades have not narrowed their differences over the islands, which Japan calls its Northern Territories.
Apart from issues of national pride and sovereignty, there are rich fishing grounds near the Kuriles, and geologists are said to believe there may be rich undersea energy deposits in the area as well.