Japan`s Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone called for Russia and Japan to make greater efforts to resolve a longstanding territorial dispute over four of the Kuril Islands, in an interview published in the Kommersant daily Wednesday.

`There is no progress in the peace treaty negotiations between our two countries,` Nakasone deplored ahead of Wednesday`s talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Tokyo.

`This is unnatural, and as Russo-Japanese ties are developing on international grounds such as the G-8 or the United Nations, Russia is strengthening its ties with the Pacific Asian states, this is more and more obvious,` Nakasone pointed out.

However, as leaders of both countries `confirmed their intent to sincerely hold talks based on earlier documents to achieve a final resolution of the peace treaty issue,` the two ministers `will apply maximum effort to find a mutually acceptable solution,` Nakasone assured.

Japan, a close US ally, has never formally ended World War II with Russia due to Moscow`s control over four islands off Japan`s northern coast briefly held by Japan following the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 and seized back by the Soviet Union in 1945.

Soviet troops seized the four Kuril islands days after Japan`s surrender in World War II and expelled their Japanese residents.