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China `snubbed over sea row alliance bid'
Friday, February 07, 2014
Russia has rejected a Chinese offer to cooperate on their separate territorial rows with Japan, a report says, as President Xi Jinping arrived yesterday for the opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics.President Vladimir Putin is expected to meet Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Beijing said it would support Moscow in its decades-old dispute over islands to the north of Japan in exchange for backing in its row about the ownership of the Diaoyus, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.
The offer has been made repeatedly since 2010, the paper said, citing diplomatic sources in Russia and Japan, but has always been brushed off.
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Putin and Abe are expected to discuss the Russia-controlled Southern Kurils, which Japan claims. Soviet troops took the islands in the final days of World War II. The issue has prevented the signing of a formal peace treatybetween the two countries.
But an increasingly close working relationship between Putin and Abe, who have already held four summits since the latter took office in late 2012, has offered hope of progress, though Tokyo said it is unlikely to be settled in thenear future.
"We are not overly optimistic about negotiations," a foreign ministry official said. "Putin has been consistent in asserting Russian ownership."
China, engaged in territorial disputes with countries surrounding the South China Sea, usually refuses to deal multilaterally and insists rows should be settled between two claimants.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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