Tokyo, Moscow lock horns in disputed islands standoff

BROKEN WHEELS

According to a recent editorial in Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper, Moscow's willingness for continued dialogue on the matter and Tokyo's unavoidable procrastination on the issue due to recent political turbulence and change, could make Russia impatient.

"Russia may have become impatient with Japan, seeing that Tokyo's stance on the territorial problem had remained unchanged after the change of government from the Liberal Democratic Party to the Democratic Party of Japan," the Asahi said.

"Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama proposed the concept of an East Asian community. But he stepped down without showing how to position the Japan-Russia relations within that framework. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has met with Medvedev only briefly on one occasion," the editorial said.

Similarly, independent political analyst Teruhisa Muramatsu told Xinhua that Hatoyama was invited by Medvedev to hold talks on the subject.

"Medvedev told former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who was visiting Russia as Prime Minister Naoto Kan's special envoy in early September, that he wished to discuss the territorial dispute in a calm and resolution-oriented manner," Muramatsu said.

"It would appear the 'calmness' Medvedev was referring to is for the time being out of the equation. Relations are likely to become even more frosty and it's not about power-wielding or pigheadedness per se, it's about a lack of dialogue when the door has been opened and too much history being allowed to pass through without the door ever firmly closing behind a bilateral resolution," he said.