Japan and Russia agreed Monday to hold a bilateral summit meeting in Russia's Irkutsk on March 25 as planned, regardless of mounting calls in Japan for Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to step down.
At a vice-ministerial meeting held in Tokyo to prepare for the summit, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Losyukov told his Japanese counterpart, Ryozo Kato, that Japan's domestic politics would not influence Russia's decision to hold the meeting, a Foreign Ministry official said.
Mori survived a no-confidence motion submitted by the opposition parties at the Diet earlier in the day, but his fate is still uncertain amid his plunging popularity.