The meeting held on February 18 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk between President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso was dedicated to a broad overview of the outcomes and the determination of further prospects for the development of Russian-Japanese relations along the lines of the 2003 Action Plan and the accords reached between the two leaders on the fringes of the APEC summit in Lima in November 2008.

In this context Medvedev and Aso stressed the importance of continuing the bilateral political dialogue at the highest level.

Considerable attention was paid to discussing ways of consistent advancement of economic and trade cooperation, especially as Taro Aso arrived in Sakhalin at the Russian President’s invitation to attend the launching ceremony for a gas liquefaction plant under the Sakhalin 2 project. Incidentally, a significant part of the LNG produced at this plant will be exported to Japan.

Agreement was reached to reinvigorate bilateral cooperation in the energy sphere, including exploration of the possibilities to cooperate in creating in Maritime Territory a plant for the production of LNG and a gas chemical plant and in the development of coal fields in Yakutia and Tuva.

During the meeting, the importance was noted of deepening Russian-Japanese engagement in Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. There was reaffirmed on the Japanese side, in particular, the readiness to take part in the construction of a bridge to Russky Island as part of the preparations for a 2012 APEC summit in Vladivostok. This summer the region will be visited by a large mission of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry accompanied by representatives of private companies to search for new promising projects.

In discussing the international agenda, priority attention was devoted to measures for overcoming the world financial and economic crisis with an eye to the preparation of a G20 summit in London. In this case the Russian side emphasized the urgent necessity of creating a new global financial architecture since the existing one has outlived its usefulness, proving that it is incapable of withstanding the crisis phenomena effectively.

The leaders held an exchange of views on the problem of a peace treaty, including the aspect of border demarcation. In continuation of their relevant discussion in November 2008 in Lima the President and the Prime Minister expressed an intention to search for a mutually acceptable solution to the problem by acting in the spirit of readiness for reciprocal movement away from extreme approaches and of understanding the necessity of maintaining a healthy, constructive atmosphere around that dialogue, inter alia by the active development of Russian-Japanese cooperation in all fields.

The Japanese side raised the theme of the filling-in of migration cards by Japanese participants of visa-free trips to the South Kurils in line with the intergovernmental accord of 1991. The Russian side reconfirmed that acting on this issue within the law we do not refuse to search for ways of solving the issue in a friendly, partner-like vein.

The meeting in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was held in a beneficial and constructive atmosphere.