Hashimoto and Yeltsin set hard target to clear hurdles

No sooner had China reminded the United States of their cooperation during World War II, Russia and Japan sought to end their hostility which has endured since World War II. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin analyses the deadline set at the Russo-Japanese Siberian Summit, notes the difficulties in the way of fulfillment, but suggests that Beijing and Washington cannot take failure for granted.

HONG KONG (JP): Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto did take a first major step towards ending World War II between Japan and Russia, before concluding their so-called Sauna Summit in the eastern Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

As it happened, Yeltsin and Hashimoto did not exchange confidences in a sauna on Saturday night on Nov. 1, for reasons that have yet to be explained. Yeltsin usually enjoys sharing the heat with world leaders, and Hashimoto, as a Japanese, is used to taking very hot baths.

But the two leaders did agree to something more substantive -- they set a deadline for signing a Russo-Japanese peace treaty, the last legal formality required for officially bringing World War II to a conclusion.

That, in turn, implies coming to grips with the outstanding territorial dispute between the two nations over the four southernmost islands in the chain of islands which runs south from Sakhalin to a point just off the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido. These four islands comprise what Japan sees as its Northern Territories, which the Russians have occupied ever since the close of World War II.

Hashimoto indicated what was to come as he told Japanese journalists on the plane to Krasnoyarsk -- and as he later told Yeltsin -- "each (leader) has the responsibility to at least confirm a route towards a settlement of the (territorial) problem that arose this century within this century".

"At all costs, Japan and Russia must normalize relations. It is important not only for Japan and Russia but also for the international community", Hashimoto said.

Left unstated was the fact that the Russo-Japanese effort to normalize prickly relations came just after there had been a Sino-American effort to "normalize" their vexed relationship through the visit of President Jiang Zemin to the United States.

Left unstated, too, was the fact that the 20th century began with the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, notable for the fact that it was the first war in modern history in which an Asian power defeated a basically European power.

Perfectly illustrating the historical intractability of the territorial dispute, and the very real difficulty of solving it before the century ends, when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin annexed the Northern Territories in 1945, he told the Russian people that the earlier 1905 defeat had been finally avenged.

This is not the first time that Soviet or Russian leaders have agreed with their Japanese counterparts to seek progress on a peace treaty. But it is the first time, as far as this correspondent can recall, that the two countries have set a deadline for attaining agreement.

The deadline of a peace treaty by the year 2000 was actually agreed on Nov. 2, the second day of the summit, after Hashimoto had amply illustrated a change in Japanese policy on the first day.

Previously, the Japanese position has been that the territorial dispute must be resolved before there can be any substantive progress on other aspects of the Russo-Japanese relationship. Consequently Japan lags way behind North America and Europe as an investor in the burgeoning Russian market economy. Japan has given aid to Russia but more as a result of pressure from, and a need to keep up with, other Group of Seven members.

But this hard-nosed Tokyo policy led nowhere, mainly because it gave Russian leaders even less reason -- and certainly no incentive -- to accommodate the Japanese claim in any way whatsoever. Furthermore, the sustained Japanese hardline policy has helped to foster a more audible nationalist reaction on the Russian side, thereby making the territorial impasse even more of a self-sustaining reality.

To be fair to the Japanese, their earlier fear was that if they were forthcoming on the economic front, the Russians would feel even less reason for trying to resolve the territorial dispute. To the credit of Hashimoto and his officials, they have apparently decided that since the hardline has failed, a more conciliatory approach is the only way to break the logjam.

So, on Nov. 1, as Hashimoto and Yeltsin pledged to reach an investment protection accord, to jointly promote the further integration of the Russian economy into the global economy, to increase cooperation over projects such as railway transportation in Siberia, to enhance dialog over energy development, and to increase joint efforts regarding the peaceful use of nuclear energy, the reversal of the previous Japanese policy was plain for all to see.

Even more interesting, the two leaders agreed to a regular exchange of visits between their respective top military leaders, and to plan joint exercises between Russian and Japanese forces regarding humanitarian missions and disaster relief operations. This was the counter-point to the tentative plans for increased Sino-American military contact, agreed at the Jiang-Clinton summit.

Another parallel between the Sino-American and Russo-Japanese summits was that, on both occasions, the two leaders agreed to the setting-up of a hotline, a curious example of Cold War practice outliving the Cold War.

Yeltsin is now widely recognized as a "joiner" -- a leader who likes Russia to be a member of as many international clubs or groupings as possible.

The warmth of this summit reflected withdrawal of Japanese opposition to the Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized nations becoming, with the addition of Russia, the Group of Eight (G-8) from next year.

Hashimoto additionally pleased his host when he said that Japan would actively support Russian membership of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Symbolically, Hashimoto also gave several personal gifts to Yeltsin, including baby clothes for the Russian leader's recently born fifth grandchild, and a camera just like the one which the Japanese leader himself uses.

Yeltsin reportedly reciprocated with two wolf hides and some Siberian gems, possibly a subtle Russian hint that they could be more accommodating if Japan sought concessions over raw material extraction, rather than extracting islands from Mother Russia.

All told, the Japanese reversed their attitude towards Russia in style, though whether the several initiatives now set in motion will so change the nature of the relationship as to, in turn, change the prospect for territorial compromise remains doubtful.

Kranoyarsk was a symbolically appropriate city for this Russo- Japanese breakthrough summit in that it is roughly the same distance from Moscow as it is from Tokyo.

But it will be far more difficult for the respective negotiators to be able to also go halfway towards each others positions on the territorial dispute, given the diametrically opposed nationalist emotions behind the two nation's positions.

As always, claims to sovereignty are not something which nations can easily dilute.

This was illustrated right after the summit as reformist Russian Deputy Premier Boris Nemtsov stressed that Yeltsin was bound by the Russian Constitution to maintain the country's borders, and therefore the Kurile islands.

While some observers saw this Nemtsov comment as one more sign of how intractable the dispute really is, in fact it was not necessarily so.

Prior to the Russo-Japanese War and World War II, the agreed "border" between Russia and Japan was determined by treaty to lie between the Northern Territories (which were considered Japanese offshore islands) and the Kurile islands.

Obviously, were Russian voters to see increased economic benefit in rapprochement with Japan, they would be more open to arguments that Russia should abide by its more distant treaty obligations.

Another possibility would be some form of joint administration of the Northern Territories as a special economic zone. This possibility has been recently floated by Vladimir Zema, the chief administrator of the Southern Kuriles, as the Russians now call the Northern Territories.

The trouble with this idea would be if it meant that Japan had to accept Russian sovereignty over the disputed islands in perpetuity.

The only certainty is that if Russia and Japan can somehow find a way to finally conclude World War II in the next two to three years, both nations will gain extra room for maneuver in their relations with China and the United States.

Conversely, after the Siberian Summit in Krasnoyarsk neither Washington nor Beijing can go on taking sustained Russo-Japanese hostility for granted.