Broken wheels

According to a recent editorial in Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper, Moscow's willingness for continued dialogue on the matter and Tokyo's unavoidable procrastination on the issue due to recent political turbulence and change, could make Russia impatient.

"Russia may have become impatient with Japan, seeing that Tokyo's stance on the territorial problem had remained unchanged after the change of government from the Liberal Democratic Party to the Democratic Party of Japan," the Asahi said.

"Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama proposed the concept of an East Asian community. But he stepped down without showing how to position the Japan-Russia relations within that framework. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has met with Medvedev only briefly on one occasion," the editorial said.

Similarly, independent political analyst Teruhisa Muramatsu told Xinhua that Hatoyama was invited by Medvedev to hold talks on the subject.

"Medvedev told former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who was visiting Russia as Prime Minister Naoto Kan's special envoy in early September, that he wished to discuss the territorial dispute in a calm and resolution-oriented manner," Muramatsu said.

"It would appear the 'calmness' Medvedev was referring to is for the time being out of the equation. Relations are likely to become even more frosty and it's not about power-wielding or pigheadedness per se, it's about a lack of dialogue when the door has been opened and too much history being allowed to pass through without the door ever firmly closing behind a bilateral resolution," he said.

Such recent history includes Russian maritime authorities' killing of a Japanese fisherman and capturing of a Japanese crab fishing boat in the waters around the disputed Kuril Islands in 2006.

But days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pledged Russia would build relations with Japan through increased dialogue and Japan's then foreign minister responded by saying Japan has a "firm and long standing relationship with Russia."

The Russia-Japan relations deteriorated severely when Japan published a new guideline for school textbooks in 2008 to teach Japanese children that their country has sovereignty over the Kuril Islands.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Tokyo's actions were reprehensible and Russia reaffirmed its sovereignty over the islands.

In January, Russian border guards were engaged in an aggressive encounter with two Japanese fishing vessels in disputed waters off the islands.

The Russian president is expected to meet with Kan at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Japan's Yokohama in November, but analysts believed a severe chill will be injected into the Russia-Japan ties if Medvedev goes ahead with his planned visit to islands.

"It all seems a little futile, not unavoidable, but certainly the outlook is bleaker now than it could have been if effective diplomacy had been employed sooner and in earnest by the Democrats," said McLellan.

"Particularly after (Prime Minister Naoto) Kan took office, he said he would 'energetically address Japan's ties with Russia and would push the wheels of the cart forward, both in the field of politics and economy,which would eventually lead to a peace treaty after many years of the Kuril Islands dispute.' What happened? Did the wheels of the cart fall off?" McLellan added.

The Japanese Yomiuri newspaper said in a recent editorial that "Moscow apparently senses that the Japan-U.S. alliance has been shaken since the Democratic Party of Japan came into power last year. The administration of Prime Minister Naoto Kan must turn around its approach to foreign relations as quickly as possible."