Japan and Russia said Wednesday they will begin talks for a nuclear cooperation agreement, under which Tokyo can outsource to Moscow uranium enrichment for recycling nuclear fuel.

The agreement was made public after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a summit talk with visiting Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.

No specific dates on when to start or complete the negotiations or other details were immediately released. Kyodo News quoted Abe's spokesman, Hiroshige Seko as saying that the two countries want to "promote peaceful use of nuclear energy."

According to reports, Abe and Fradkov also discussed during the summit over the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, energy cooperation and territorial disputes of the four islets called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia.

"...We reaffirmed the importance of resolving the territorial dispute," Abe was quoted as saying by Kyodo News, "We agreed to further our efforts in negotiations to find a mutually acceptable solution based on the various agreements and documents concluded so far."

During Fradkov's two-day visit, the two nations signed several documents on boosting economic ties and on issuing natural disasters alerts in the disputed area.

(Xinhua News Agency March 1, 2007)