MOSCOW. Sept 1 (Interfax) - Russia stands ready to cooperate with Japan as closely as possible and will seek to bring bilateral relations to a qualitatively new level regardless of the outcome of the election of the leader of Japan's ruling party and, consequently, the country's prime minister, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
An objective has been set to develop relations in all areas as actively and as profoundly as possible "in order to achieve a level of ties that will make it possible to solve the most difficult issues of any sort," Lavrov said in a speech to first-year students and professors at the Russian Foreign Ministry's MGIMO University on Tuesday.
"Today, regrettably, we are still far from where we want to be in our relations with Japan," Lavrov said, adding that Tokyo has joined in anti-Russian sanctions and has close ties with the United States.
"Of course, we very much want to develop a professional dialogue on security in the region where we border the Japanese islands, and we want to understand how Japan sees its obligations to the U.S. in the military sphere in light of the situation in which the U.S. has officially declared Russia its adversary," he said.
"Regardless of the outcome of the current situation surrounding the election of the ruling party's leader and, consequently, the election of the prime minister, we stand ready to cooperate with our Japanese neighbors as closely possible in all fields [...]. But the key objective, that is to raise our relations to a qualitatively new, positive level, always remains on the agenda," Lavrov said.