Japanese Prime Minister explains why he kept the content of negotiations with President Putin secret
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his face-to-face talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be made public yet because it would undermine trust between the two sides.
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| Russian President Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Photo: Sputnik |
During Mr Abe's speech at the parliamentary hearings, one of the deputies asked whether it was possible to "later see the interpreter's transcript" of the one-on-one meeting between the two leaders.
"There are notes from the interpreter, he is a Foreign Ministry employee, and of course, this is an official document. These documents can be viewed later, but since these are negotiations between just the two of us, it will take a long time to decide how to handle their confidentiality," the Japanese prime minister said.
As Mr Abe noted, this refers to private negotiations and “they must be conducted frankly”.
"So if we make the content of the talks public now, then neither Putin nor I will be able to speak frankly next time... Also, we need to think about the criteria for publishing this information. And in general, why do we have such one-on-one conversations? Because there are things that cannot be said in public. It was very difficult for us to come to the format of private conversations. In the end, we achieved this," he added.
According to him, the format of one-on-one communication with Putin was an important achievement. Earlier, Prime Minister Abe said that he was "very determined to put a final stop" to the peace treaty issue with Mr. Putin.