Japan has told Russia the deployment of missiles on disputed islands in the Pacific is “deplorable,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday, ahead of talks aimed at resolving a decades-old territorial spat.
The positioning of coastal defense missiles on two of the four islands in contention was reported by Russian media this week and comes after concerted efforts by both countries to improve relations.
Japan-Russian ties have been hamstrung by a row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the southernmost islands in the Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan, that lies off the northeast coast of Hokkaido.
The tensions have prevented the countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending wartime hostilities, and have hindered trade and investment.“The Northern Territories are an inherent part of Japan’s territory,” Abe told parliament on Friday. Abe said Japan had told Russia the deployment “is deplorable” and “is contradictory to Japan’s position” on the issue. However, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday the missile deployment was aimed at the “consistent strengthening of national security.”
“Missile systems were deployed to the southern Kurils in line with that position,” she said, calling them “an integral part of Russian territory.”
The remarks came ahead of a December 15 meeting between Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Yamaguchi city in western Japan, which is aimed at making progress on the territorial dispute.
Meanwhile, an influential Chinese academic and government adviser said on Friday that China is considering a “wholesale” deal that will grant Philippine fishing vessels access to disputed Scarborough Shoal waters, as relations between the two countries improve.
China has been thinking of means to grant Philippine fishing vessels access to the island’s waters since President Rodrigo Duterte visited Beijing in October, said Wu Shicun, head of government-run National Institute for South China Sea Studies.
“A wholesale bilateral fishing industry deal is still being discussed, an agreement has not yet been reached,” Wu said at a forum in Beijing.
China’s bitter squabble with the Philippines over the waters has subsided since Duterte’s visit, which came shortly after a Netherlands-based arbitration court ruled in favor of the Philippines, undermining China’s territorial claims.
Since 2012, China had used its coast guard to block the waters around the shoal from Filipinos, but Chinese vessels reportedly left the region after Duterte’s visit, allowing fishermen to return.
Last week, Duterte made a unilateral declaration barring fishermen from exploiting marine life at a tranquil lagoon that was central to years of bitter squabbling, a sharp reversal in the Philippines’ previous policy.
At this time, the waters within the shoal are not accessible to either Chinese or Filipino fishermen, Wu said. Fishermen would be granted access to the shoal for humanitarian reasons if a typhoon hit the waters, he added.
Wu has been involved in diplomatic efforts to bring China and the Philippines closer together since Duterte’s election.
Zhu Feng, director of the South China Sea Center at Nanjing University, said there had been a “fundamental change” since Duterte came into office.

Source: Arab News