Japan seeks consensus to resolve dispute with Russia over Kurils
Moscow's envoy to Tokyo believes both sides are making progress on their relationship despite long-runnning dispute over seized islands
Amid the tumult in East Asian geopolitics - from territorial disputes to energy security, nuclear weapons and a potential arms race - Evgeny Afanasiev likes to quote Andrei Gromyko, foreign minister of the Soviet Union for 28 years.
"'Ten years of negotiations are better than one day of war'," the Russian ambassador to Tokyo said. "I think that is right."
The single issue that has divided Moscow and Tokyo, and obstructed the signing of a peace treaty to formally end the second world war has dragged on far longer than a decade, however. The two governments have been unable to solve the question of sovereignty over a chain of tiny islands off northern Japan that were seized by the Soviet Union in the dying days of the war.
But Afanasiev believes the time is ripe for the issue to be finally put to rest.
"This issue is a result of World War II and we have been there since 1945, but we would like to resolve this question and that is why we are in dialogue with Japan," he told the South China Morning Post. "We have different possibilities, but this is a very serious issue and we are determined to continue our dialogue."