Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi on Monday congratulated acting Russian President Vladimir Putin via telephone on his victory in Sunday's presidential elections, a Foreign Ministry official said.

During the roughly 10-minute conversation, Obuchi stressed the importance of holding a Japan-Russia summit before the Group of Eight summit in Okinawa in July, the official said.

In response, Putin told Obuchi that Russia's ultimate goal in its ties with Japan is to "completely normalize relations" and that he will strive to achieve that aim, the official said.

Putin also said he is studying the possibility of holding a top-level meeting with Obuchi and visiting Japan, although he did not elaborate on details such as the possible timing of any trip, the official said.

Earlier in the day, Obuchi issued a statement saying Tokyo hopes to advance bilateral relations on all fronts, including bilateral peace treaty negotiations.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki told a press conference the same day that the Japanese government will deal with a series of previous agreements reached by the two countries' leaders soon after the new Russian president takes office.

There has been little progress in talks between Japan and Russia on the signing of a peace treaty, although the two sides set up diplomatic relations and ended a technical state of war after signing a joint statement in 1956.

A formal peace treaty was never signed because of a territorial dispute over four islands off Hokkaido that were occupied by troops from the former Soviet Union at the end of World War II.

But Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, agreed with then-Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto during an informal meeting in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in November 1997 to sign a peace treaty by the end of 2000.