It's Better To Be Hanged For Loyalty

Equipping One Side Of An Ethnic Conflict And Then Prodding It To Resolve Its Ethnic Problems By Force Of Arms Is A Very Bad Policy.

As Regards Humanitarian Issues And How To Handle Them, That Was The Prime Minister's [shinzō Abe] Initiative. He Brought The Matter Up At Our Last Meeting In Lima And Asked Me Straightforwardly Whether We Would Agree To Let Japanese Citizens Travel On A Visa-free Basis, Resolve The Issue In Such A Way As To Enable Them To Visit The South Kurils, Visit Their Native Areas. I Said At Once That It Was Quite Possible.

It's Better To Be Hanged For Loyalty Than Be Rewarded For Betrayal.

Our Agreements On Creating The Conditions For Preparing A Peace Treaty [with Japan] Should Be Rooted In This Trust. This May Be Achieved, For Example, By Large-scale Economic Activities That Will Also Cover The Kuril Islands. It May Be Achieved By Solving Purely Humanitarian Issues, For Instance, Unhindered Visa-free Travel By Former Residents Of The Southern Kuril Islands To Where They Used To Live: Visiting Cemeteries, Native Places And So On.

I Believe That In Fact It Would Be Economically Reasonable And Logical To Reach A Compromise [on Oil Production], I Am Sure That Everybody Understands This.