Sergey Lavrov and Japan

territorial issue: We are not thinking that the peace treaty is synonymous with the solution of the territorial issue, Lavrov said at a Jan. 26 news conference here, according to Asahi Shimbun. His remarks, totally unacceptable to Japan, mark a major backward step in efforts to resolve the territorial dispute. Sergey Lavrov said that Japan, as a defeated nation in World War II, should realize it has no authority to make claims to the Northern Territories that were seized by Soviet forces in 1945. Japan and Russia signed the Tokyo Declaration in 1993 in which they agreed that negotiations toward an early conclusion of a peace treaty through the solution of this issue should continue. However, Lavrov latest statement represents a more hard-line stance by Russia. After Vladimir Putin became Russia president in 2000, he also approved the Tokyo Declaration with the Irkutsk Statement that he signed with Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in 2001. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.