High stakes talk this weekend between Moscow and Tokyo

THE talks scheduled for this weekend in Moscow between Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, could represent what some see as "possibly the last chance" to settle a critical territorial dispute between Russia and Japan.

The dispute concerns the four islands known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the Southern Kuriles, consisting of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai islets. They were seized by the former Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II when Japan was close to capitulating.

For some 70 years since then, the dispute has lingered on, preventing the former Soviet Union (and now Russia) from signing a post-war peace treaty between the two countries and limiting their economic cooperation to a minimum. The rest of the world did not care too much about the dispute, one way or another, and in recent times the quarrel between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, or China's controversial incursions into the South China Sea, have attracted far more attention. Yet, if Mr Lavrov and Mr Kishida can hammer out at least a partial agreement on the Russo-Japan dispute - to be endorsed at the top level when Russian President Vladimir Putin holds talks with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo later this month - that could be a real breakthrough.