Kuril Islands is an archipelago on the border of the sea of Okhotsk with the Pacific ocean. Located between the Kamchatka Peninsula and the island of Hokkaido (Japan). Includes more than 30 major Islands and numerous islets and rocks, is part of the Sakhalin region. Total area of 15.6 km2.
The southern Islands of the archipelago — Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai archipelago — challenged Japan.
The Japanese party puts forward claims to the southern Kuril Islands, citing their links to the Russo-Japanese Treaty on trade and borders of 1855 on which the specified Islands were recognized as Japanese, as well as the fact that these territories are not part of the Kuril Islands, which Japan refused under the San Francisco peace Treaty of 1951, Japan has put in dependence from the solution of the territorial dispute signing a peace Treaty between the two countries.
The position of the Russian side on the issue of border demarcation is that the southern Kuril Islands was passed to the country by the end of the Second world war legally in accordance with the agreements of the allied powers (Yalta agreement of 11 February 1945, the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945) and the Russian sovereignty over them with appropriate international legal design, not subject to doubt.
Reaffirming the commitment to earlier agreements on holding negotiations on the peace Treaty, including border demarcation, the Russian side stressed that the solution to this problem should be mutually acceptable, does not prejudice the sovereignty and national interests of Russia, to the support of the public and parliaments of both countries.
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