Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Friday to advance talks to realize joint economic activities on Russian-held, Japanese-claimed islands off Hokkaido.Abe and Putin agreed to hold a vice foreign ministerial meeting in late August in Moscow as part of an effort to craft specific projects for such activities, a senior Japanese official told reporters after their talks in Hamburg, Germany, on the fringes of the Group of 20 summit.Japan hopes joint economic activities, once started, will pave the way for addressing a decades-long territorial dispute w…READ FULL ARTICLE
