Vice-foreign ministers from the two countries met in Tokyo for a regular "strategic dialogue" to discuss ties strained by the territorial row over the Kurils that has been unresolved since World War II.

The meeting came a day after Russia's Interfax news agency reported Moscow was planning to deploy additional weaponry including anti-ship cruise missiles and air defences on the disputed islands.

"Russia's military build-up on the four northern islands is totally incompatible with our country's position and it is very deplorable," Japan's top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, told a regular news briefing.

At the half-day diplomatic meeting, the Russian side said that the military build-up was aimed at "reducing the military manpower through modernisation of weaponry," Jiji news agency reported.

The chief cabinet secretary said: "We will remain consistent in asserting our country's position on the islands and strive to realise it."

Edano also said at a briefing earlier Wednesday that Japan was "watching Russian military activities in the Far East as a matter of course."

The disputed Kuril islets, called the Northern Territories by Japan, were seized by Soviet troops in the days after Japan's surrender in World War II, and the row has prevented both sides from signing a peace treaty.

The row flared up anew in November when President Dmitry Medvedev paid an unexpected visit to one of the four islands, followed by a series of trips there by other top Kremlin officials.

Tokyo and Moscow have since been engaged in a heated war of words that continued during a tense February 11 exchange in Moscow between Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

earlier related report
Maersk shuts down North Sea oil platform after leak
Copenhagen (AFP) March 2, 2011 - Danish Maersk Oil on Wednesday shut down a North Sea rig after oil was observed on the surrounding water.

Production will resume when the technicians have located the source of the leak and made the necessary repairs, the company said, adding that a later surveillance sweep by a helicopter showed that "the leakage has stopped".

Early in the day another helicopter crew first noticed the leak.

"A helicopter flying between the Maersk Oil operated Gorm and Rolf platforms observed oil on the water," the company, a subsidiary of Danish A.P. Moeller-Maersk, said in a statement.

"Oil production from the Rolf platform was stopped immediately. This afternoon a helicopter surveyed the area and reports that the leakage has stopped," it added.

Maersk said it was monitoring the situation and had activated its oil spill contingency plan, including two 1,200 metre floating boom barriers which are being transported from Denmark.

The first of those vessels was expected to be in position in the early hours of Thursday.

Maersk Oil said it was also mobilising "a remote operating vehicle (ROV) that can investigate if there is a breach in the (17 kilometre) pipeline between the Rolf and Gorm platforms."

Danish authorities have been informed.

"We take the slightest leak very seriously," Maersk Oil spokesman Thomas Groendorf told AFP.

The Rolf platform is produces 400 barrels of oil per day and is some 220 kilometres west of the Danish port of Esbjerg.

Maersk Oil produces around 200.000 barrels per day from its North Sea oil platforms.

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