Russian delegation to visit Tokyo to discuss parliamentary cooperation
MOSCOW. May 30 (Interfax) - A delegation from a Consultative Council that assists Russian-Japanese cooperation will visit Tokyo on June 7-10 to meet with Japanese parliamentarians and ministers, Konstantin Kosachyov, who chairs the Council and the Federation Council committee on international affairs, said.
"We are expecting to travel as a delegation from our Consultative Council to Japan in the near future, this visit is scheduled for June 7-10. In Tokyo we will be meeting with our counterparts in the House of Councillors, with the Discussion Club, with Mr. [Hiroshige] Seko, the minister [of economy, trade and industry], and the Japanese government representative to relevant ministries and agencies," Kosachyov said at a Consultative Council meeting on Tuesday.
It is hoped that by the end of the visit it will be possible to "acknowledge the need for and the efficiency of the parliamentary dimension of our bilateral cooperation," Kosachyov said.
"A window of opportunities" has opened in the bilateral relationship, he said.
"We remember the years and perhaps even decades of actual stagnation in these relations where Japan consistently tied any move forward in our bilateral cooperation with resolution of the well-known territorial issue and signing of a peace treaty. Now we see that this tie has, at any rate, been pushed from the forefront to the back burner. I would not assert that it is off Japan's agenda but at any rate we can now discuss real cooperation projects and, in some cases, already to proceed to their implementation," Kosachyov said.
The Consultative Council to assist Russian-Japanese inter-parliamentary and inter-regional cooperation was created along the lines of the Japanese-Russian Discussion Club of the House of Councillors of Japanese parliament, at the initiative of Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko following her visit to Japan in November 2016.