The groundwork for continuing peace treaty negotiations between Japan and Russia was laid during last week's visit here by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. Mr. Ivanov renewed Moscow's commitment to signing a long-pending peace pact in talks with Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and Foreign Minister Yohei Kono. The message of the Ivanov visit is that the new Russian government headed by Prime Minister and acting President Vladimir Putin is now ready to talk with Tokyo.

However, the prospects for a settlement of the dispute over Japan's Northern Territories, the only remaining roadblock to the signing of a peace treaty, remain uncertain at best. With no meaningful progress made on this issue during Mr. Ivanov's visit, the goal of signing a peace pact by the end of this year -- a nonbinding deadline set during the presidency of Mr. Boris Yeltsin -- hangs in the balance.

The Japanese government needs to step up talks with the Putin regime and improve Russo-Japanese relations on the basis of previous agreements, particularly the 1997 summit accord in Krasnoyarsk that said the two nations will "strive" to sign a peace treaty by the end of 2000. That accord was committed to writing in the Moscow Declaration during Mr. Obuchi's visit to Russia in November 1998. Another key agreement is the Tokyo Declaration of 1993, which calls for the conclusion of a peace treaty through the resolution of the territorial problem based on the "principles of law and justice."