7 July 2017, 06:15 GMT
HAMBURG (Sputnik) — On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg. According to the Kyodo news agency, the leaders agreed to arrange a meeting of the states' deputy foreign ministers in August for specifying the joint economic activity on the Southern Kuril islands.
"We will have a meeting at the vice minister's level in the end of August in Moscow for these issues of the discussion of the peace treaty, especially on these joint economic activities. We have a lot of legal questions to be settled," Maruyama said on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
The Russian-Japanese relations have long been complicated by the fact that the two nations have never signed a permanent peace treaty after World War II ended. This was due to a disagreement over a group of four islands claimed by both countries: Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai.
The decision to establish joint economic activities on the disputed islands was reached during Putin's visit to Japan in December 2016.
