On first trip, Mori gets some success

By F.J. Khergamvala

TOKYO, MAY 2. The new Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Yoshiro Mori is on a whistle-stop tour of a few European and Group of Eight nations, whose leaders will be his guest at the summit in Okinawa in late July. He has scored limited success in Russia, the only destination where there was some serious bilateral business.

The Japanese leader's ``I am Yoshiro Mori'' journey is for what the Japanese call ``nemawashi'' or root-building. It is a necessary element of any serious business to come and is used to break the ice and get to know the interlocutor. With Russia, the first stop on the journey, other than meeting Moscow's newly elected head, Mr. Mori had to restore on track a solution to a long-standing dispute that has hindered full normalisation.

This is Golden Week in Japan with a cluster of holidays clubbed together to provide more than a week of time off. Traditionally, some important members of the Japanese Cabinet take this time to do foreign policy business. Mr Mori's own trip ends with the essential pilgrimage to Washington DC on Friday, before he returns home to the cares of domestic politics, which will be marginally impacted by how he performs abroad.

Mr. Mori is soon expected to call a general election, possibly to coincide with the birthday of his ailing predecessor, Mr. Keizo Obuchi, on June 25. His success in St. Petersburg in getting the Russian President-elect, Mr. Vladimir Putin to agree to visit Japan in August is a breakthrough. Mr. Putin pointedly noted that Russia was the first stop on the new Japanese Prime Minister's itinerary and this possibly had its symbolic reward.

Mr. Mori's primary purpose of giving his halt in Russia such priority was to cultivate and make an investment in the young Russian leader. Japan hopes that at some stage this will lead to a bold decision by Mr. Putin on the territorial dispute regarding the southern Kuriles, or, as the Japanese call them, the Northern Territories, a group of four islands to the North of Hokkaido. Japan had invested a great deal in Mr. Boris Yeltsin personally but found that neither his health nor authority lived up to Tokyo's expectations.

Russia and Japan have diplomatic ties since 1956 but do not yet have a peace treaty ending their theoretical state of hostility. Through a series of working summits outside the respective capitals, the two sides had fleshed out a lose agreement to sign a peace treaty by the end of the current calendar year. The former Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Ryutaro Hashimoto's visit to Mr. Yeltsin in Krasnoyarsk in 1997 acknowledged the need to resolve the dispute and strive to reach a peace treaty by the end of this year.

A few months later, in April 1998, Mr. Yeltsin came to the fishing resort of Kawana in Japan. Mr. Hashimoto made a proposal whose substance has not been acknowledged officially but is known to have been based on a ``decide now, do later'' principle. Mr. Hashimoto apparently promised huge Japanese investments if Russia could first concede that the ownership of the disputed islands will be with Japan but a time-table for actual transfer of authority would be decided later. Mr. Obuchi too pursued that proposal. Japan does not join the Western chorus against Moscow on Chechnya, which Tokyo considers is an internal matter for Russia.

Mr. Mori still wishes to continue down that road but he must convince the Russian leader that the peace treaty must include some concessions on the de jure ownership of the Northern Territories, which consists of four island groups. Russia agrees to the peace treaty being signed by the end of this year, but does not see the need to include the resolution of the territorial dispute as a pre- condition.

Initially, Mr. Putin turned down Mr. Mori's invitation to visit Japan officially in July after the Okinawa summit. Russia suggested a November visit, but Japan wanted to have the peace treaty done by December this year. Mr. Putin compromised by agreeing to make the trip in late August. This would be the first time in seven years for a Russian President to visit Japan officially, since Mr. Yeltsin came in 1993. This symbolism is a step towards furthering Japanese interests and might go down better with voters than the usual photo-opportunity with the U.S. President.

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Section  : International
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