A Bitter Dispute Frozen in Time

If all goes to plan and Vladimir Putin visits Japan this spring, his itinerary could include a visit to the world exposition site in Nagoya, where one of the highlights will be a display of the partial remains of a mammoth retrieved from beneath Siberian ice.

That beast has been freed, but 60 years after the war, another unwieldy creature - Russian-Japanese relations - remains frozen in time.

Whether they will ever defrost depends on the fate of four islands of little economic or strategic value to either country but which are of great symbolic importance to both.

The Northern Territories - known as the Southern Kurils in Russia - were seized from Japan by the Soviet army just days after Japan's surrender in August 1945.

Many of the 17,000 Japanese then living on Shikotan, Kunashiri, Etorofu and the Habomai islets were forced to leave. Now, the chain is inhabited by 14,000 Russians who, like their predecessors, make a living from fishing.

Now, as the countries mark 150 years of "goodwill", Tokyo is repeating its demands that the islands be returned. Until that happens, it says, bilateral ties will never reach their full potential. It has refused to sign a peace treaty until there is agreement: theoretically, Tokyo and Moscow are still at war.

Japan's latest push came at a rally in Tokyo on Monday, which marked the 150th anniversary of a commerce, navigation and delimitation pact, better known as the Shimoda Treaty.

In 1956, the countries signed a joint declaration agreeing that the Soviets would return two of the islands, but only after a peace treaty had been signed.

Diplomatic waters were muddied further when the two countries issued a joint declaration in 1993, stating that the fate of all four islands would have to be resolved before second world war hostilities could be brought to an official close.

Russia is sticking to the 1956 terms; Japan insists the 1993 deal is all that matters.

This amounts to a diplomatic minefield, and one that neither side believes it can negotiate without causing suffering back home.

Japan says the latest Russian offer of two of the islands is unacceptable. Previous agreements aside, to settle for that would be a slap in the faces of former islanders who are dying off as they continue their campaign for their beloved islands from the Japanese mainland.

"Our principle to collectively seek the return of the four islands that originally belonged to Japan is unshakeable," Toshio Koizumi, head of a group of former islanders, said in a newspaper interview this week. "Any proposal, other than a return of all four islands, cannot be accepted."

It is a desire not to alienate people such as Mr Koizumi that compels Japanese politicians to suggest that, in fact, Russian capitulation is not far off.

"If necessary, [the prime minister] will visit Russia to realise the return of the Northern Territories one way or another," Japanese foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura said at Monday's rally.

But recent high-level talks exposed the chasm that exists between Moscow and Tokyo. Last month, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, emerged from talks with Mr Machimura and said, "We can even say that our stands [on the islands] are completely opposite."

That meeting was supposed to lay the ground for perhaps the best hope for a solution - a tête-a-tête in Tokyo between Mr Putin and Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi.

Mr Putin was to have made his fist visit to Japan in the second half of last year before the territorial dispute, and terrorism at home, intervened. It is unclear when he will visit, although April is the latest date to emerge.

Both men will come to the meeting with their hands tied. Mr Putin has already negotiated border changes with China and knows there is considerable public opposition to ceding any ground to the Japanese.

Mr Koizumi, meanwhile, remains unpredictable. Early in his tenure he refused to allow relations with Russia to be dictated by the Kurils, particularly in the midst of better trade relations and cultural exchanges.

Yet, at the end of last year he did what none of his predecessors had done and travelled to the seas off the islands by boat, making sure the media pack captured him, binoculars in hand, gazing though the mist at his nation's "stolen" lands.

His critics accused him of selfishly seeking to secure his place in history by bullying the Russians into submission with public shows of determination.

Members of Mr Koizumi's inner circle suggested recently that he is no longer steeling himself for a showdown with Mr Putin, whenever they finally do sit down together.

And he is already lowering domestic expectations of Putin's visit. "People seem to have a strong belief that [Putin's] visit to Japan will automatically lead to a settlement, but it's not as easy as that," he said.

There are myriad reasons, amid the general gloom, why neither leader should allow the islands to dominate their dealings with each other.

Russia and Japan need to present a united front at six-party talks aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. Doing so would also make them more comfortable with China's growing economic and military influence in the region.

Though it receives little in the way of aid from Japan - another Northern Territories hangover - Russia has vast natural resources and oil reserves to sell to the rest of the world. Japan, which has few of the former and none of the latter - is an obvious place to start peddling its wares.

That Moscow appreciates the hard economic facts was clear at the end of last year when it decided to build an oil pipeline across Siberia to Nakhodka on its east coast. This would make it easier to export to Japan rather than to China, which would have been the cheaper of the two options.

But until they meet, it seems that Mr Putin and Mr Koizumi will play to their domestic galleries.

Mr Koizumi, who was unable to attend Monday's rally because of a cold, devoted today's issue of his email magazine to the territorial dispute, lest anyone begin to question his resolve.

"If I left any of you concerned," he said, "let me reassure you that I have recovered and feel well [enough] again to tackle the mounting issues, both domestic and overseas, with verve and vigor."

But where Russia is concerned, a little calm and contemplation would not go amiss.