Most that can be hoped

A miracle was not on the agenda in freezing Moscow after all. Yet Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's recent official visit to Russia, the first in 25 years for a Japanese prime minister, holds the hope of a future breakthrough in the question of the Northern Territories.

The Russians agreed to set up a committee to draw a new border for the territories along with the committee for discussing joint economic development of the islands. The agreement to create the two committees is the biggest step -- on the long road toward signing a peace treaty -- achieved in the first meeting between Prime Minister Obuchi and President Boris Yeltsin.

Given the ailing president's declining leadership in Russian politics and Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov's preoccupation with Russia's economic crisis, it appears that the latest Russian reply to the Japanese proposal was the most that Japan could hope for.

-- The Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo