MOSCOW. Feb 21 (Interfax) - Moscow would like to engage with Tokyo in preparing a treaty which would lay the foundations of good neighborly relations to a full extent, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"As President Putin proposed during the Eastern Economic Forum last September, we would be willing to prepare and sign a peace treaty right now. But not the kind of peace treaty that is signed immediately after wars, because the state of war between us [Russia and Japan] was terminated a long time ago," Lavrov said at a briefing for members of the European Business Association in Russia on Thursday.
He went on to recall that the state of war was terminated once the 1956 Declaration was adopted.
"And based on many decades of co-existence, cooperation in a number of areas, we would like to prepare a treaty to expose the fundamentals of our good neighborly, friendly relations to a full extent. But at this point, our Japanese colleagues are approaching the issue of a peace treaty in a different way," Lavrov said.
The 1956 Declaration "envisaged exactly this sequence: first a peace treaty, first of all," he said.
"In this regard, I cannot but mention something that I have to say all the time: signing a peace treaty cannot but imply a compulsory confirmation of the outcomes of World War II, as they were enacted, set out in many documents. But most importantly, as they are set forth in the UN Charter," Lavrov said.
"It is written there that all the victorious powers have done is not negotiable," he said.
The statement is just impossible to avoid, Lavrov said.