Pavel Zarubin: Good afternoon, I'm Pavel Zarubin, channel Rossiya. Yesterday, you've met with the Japanese Prime Minister and the Japanese media wrote earlier that Abe is coming here with a proposition to return to the Soviet-Japanese declaration of 1956. According to the recent information, Russia and Japan have agreed to activate a dialogue based on this very declaration. Could you tell us the details: what does it mean? Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: The fact is that we did resume the dialogue with our Japanese partners basing it on the declaration of 1956. That's what our Japanese partners asked us because, I'll remind how it went historically, I've told this many times and will say it once again. When the World War II ended, certain agreements were signed, including the ones regarding the territory delimitation and the state border drawing. Those agreements are confirmed in the international law documents. So there are no problems here for us or complications. We think that everything that has formed by today has formed based on the international law documents, confirmed in the result of cooperation after World War II.
Nevertheless, Japan, as you know, sets the issue differently. We are ready to work with them. In 1956, the Soviet Union and Japan signed a declaration which is called just like that: The Declaration of 1956. What does it say? It says that the Soviet Union, after signing the peace treaty, is ready to give the two southern islands to Japan. It doesn't say on what account, it doesn't say under whose sovereignty the islands will remain, it doesn't say on what account this will be done. But it notes the readiness of the Soviet Union to pass those two islands to Japan. After that, there was a ratification by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Japanese parliament. But then, Japan refused to implement the agreement. As this has been continuing for a long time, I think, it was even with Gorbachev, the Soviet Union refused to implement the agreement too. Then, the Japanese asked us to return to the discussion of those issues within the framework of the Declaration. But during the discussion... the center of gravity shifted. Basically, it went away from the Declaration of 1956. But today, yesterday, to be more precise, during our meeting, the Prime Minister did say that Japan is ready to return to the discussion of the issues, basing on the Declaration of 1956.
But this, of course, demands additional, serious elaboration, taking into account the fact that, as I have already told, not everything is clear in the declaration itself. The issue that the Soviet Union is ready to give those two islands is just stated there in general. We're speaking about the southern part of the string. But there's nothing about the account of this or under whose sovereignty will the islands fall. This has to be seriously elaborated, taking into account the fact that Japan had once refused to implement the agreement in the past.
