Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed in their recent Tokyo summit to resolve the bilateral territorial dispute over the Northern Territories, stirring mixed reactions in the two countries. Although they agreed to continue peace-treaty talks toward the yearend deadline, the leaders made little progress in solving the issue.

The Japanese government said the results were regrettable, but hardly surprising; the Russian government said they were inevitable; and the Japanese media said they were disappointing. The media expected too much of the summit. They tend to be overoptimistic in analyzing events, unlike academics, who tend to make disinterested, close analyses.

The Tokyo talks focused on the 1997 agreement that was reached at Krasnoyarsk in the Russian Far East by Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Under that agreement, both countries pledged to do their best to solve the territorial dispute and conclude a peace treaty by the end of 2000 on the basis of the 1993 Tokyo declaration. When the Krasnoyarsk agreement was announced, Japanese media were highly optimistic about the possibility of the Northern Territories' reversion to Japan in late 2000.