Regnum cat. Japan does not want a peace treaty without smoking. Anatoly Koshkin: “The Kuril issue” is unsolvable (11/16/2018)
Muscovites over 18 years old will be able to get into the volunteer team for the World Cup and the Confederations Cup. Applicants will be selected in several stages.
Volunteer recruitment begins June 1st year and which will take place in 2017. They will help hold ceremonies and protocol events, answer questions from athletes and fans, communicate with the media and work as translators.
The recruitment of volunteers will last until the end of 2016. People over 18 who speak English and know how to work in a team will be able to become participants in the main football events. An additional advantage for candidates will be volunteer experience.
In total, they plan to prepare at least(5.6 thousand sports and five thousand city). The Confederations Cup will involve another 3.3 thousand people (1.8 thousand sports and one and a half thousand city volunteers).
Sports volunteers will work directly at stadiums and other competition venues, city volunteers will help tourists and fans navigate the pedestrian zones and on the central streets of the capital, work at transport hubs and in the fan zone.
It is also planned to send them on probation to major international competitions: the Olympic Games in South Korea, the Universiade in China, the European Football Championship in France, and Russian sports competitions.
How to join the team
First of all, to become a volunteer at the World Cup, you need to fill out an online application form on the site fifa.com. To do this, you will need a passport and a digital photo. The organizers note that it is desirable for applicants to be students not younger than the second year.
Then the selection will begin: first, the employees of the organizing committee "Russia-2018" will check how detailed each person answered the questions, whether he is suitable for age and education. Candidates will then take an online test for analytical skills, personality traits and knowledge of the English language. His level must be Pre-Intermediate and above, also the knowledge of a second foreign language is welcomed - Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic.
The next stage is an interview at the volunteer center. It can be taken in person or online.
The results of the selection for the Confederations Cup will be known by February 2017, and the volunteers of the World Cup will be named a year later - by February 2018.
Those who pass the selection will go to special courses. They will be organized in 15 volunteer centers that will be opened in universities across the country. In Moscow, such centers will appear at Synergy University, MGIMO, G.V. Plekhanov, RSSU and MADI. Their contacts can be found.
Here, future volunteers will be told about the history of the World Championship, instructed about the features of its organization and the rules of work at the tournament. Everyone will be able to choose for themselves the direction in which they can engage. For example, accreditation, medicine and doping control, ceremonies, team work, language services, media relations, catering (catering), ticketing, spectator services and others.
The duration of training will depend on these areas. Usually it takes one or two days, not counting the briefings at the championship facilities, which will take place before the competition itself.
The result of the volunteer for each training will be entered into the database of the organizing committee. Those who successfully complete the training will receive accreditation for the championship. Intermediate certificates will not be issued during the preparation process.
Volunteers in Moscow
Free and voluntary help others, not only during big sporting events. The volunteer movement in Moscow has been actively developing in recent years - first of all, they help those who are in dire need of it: lonely old people, the homeless, the disabled, dogs in shelters. It happens that volunteers are on duty at the donor call center, buy household items or take children in cars.
Anyone 16 years of age or older can become such a volunteer. However, for minors, parental consent is required. Some promotions require registration and a short (two to three hour) training course. Although many arrange on the principle of "Come and participate."
For those who want to take it seriously, it is better to study in
16:09 — REGNUM
A TASS message came from Japan stating that Tokyo rejects the proposal of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to sign a Russian-Japanese peace treaty in the near future without any preconditions.
“Negotiations will not be held on the basis of President Putin's statement. We have confirmed this through diplomatic channels." , - the Sankei Shimbun newspaper quotes on its website the words of an unnamed representative of the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
We are talking about the public appeal of the Russian President to the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe when both leaders took part in the September Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
Then it was said:“Let's conclude a peace treaty, not now, but before the end of the year, without any preconditions. And then, on the basis of a peace treaty, as friends, we will continue to resolve all controversial issues. And it seems to me that this would make it easier for us to solve all the problems that we have not been able to cope with for 70 years.”
Recall that what was proposed is very similar to the content of the fundamental document defining earlier Soviet-Japanese, and now Russian-Japanese relations, the Joint Soviet-Japanese Declaration signed by the governments and ratified by the parliaments of the two countries in 1956. In the 9th article of the declaration, the leadership of the USSR considered it possible to note in the document that the Soviet Union, meeting the wishes of Japan and taking into account the interests of the Japanese state, agrees to the transfer of the Habomai Islands and the Shikotan Islands to Japan, however, that in fact the transfer of these islands to Japan will be made after the conclusion of a peace treaty between the parties.
Although the then Japanese government was ready to sign a peace treaty on these terms, the United States, which did not want the full normalization of Soviet-Japanese relations, maintained the actual occupation of Japan, opposed this. The US State Department and personally its head John Dulles forced the Japanese, in violation of the provisions of the declaration, to arbitrarily expand their territorial requirements, extending them to the largest and most developed islands of the Greater Kuril ridge - Kunashir and Iturup, which the USSR never gave consent to transfer to Japan.
Never even named these islands and the current president of Russia, for many years making it clear to the Japanese of his agreement to consider only the option of resuscitation above the 9th article of the Joint Declaration. Most likely, even now, speaking about the inclusion of a clause on “disputable issues” in the text of the peace treaty, he had in mind precisely and only the islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge (Khabomai and Shikotan).
This is not enough for the Japanese, they are committed to the obviously unrealistic principle of "returning either all the South Kuril Islands, or nothing." This was confirmed yesterday by the reappointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan. Taro Kono, stating:“As for Russia, we will continue to seek a solution to the problem of the return of the northern territories (Islands Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and Khabomai - A.K.) and the conclusion of a peace treaty. To solve it, Japan is developing joint economic activities with Russia in the southern Kuriles.
Thus, it is confirmed that for Tokyo the notorious "joint economic activity in the northern territories(that is, on allegedly Japanese lands) ”is not a mutually beneficial business, as is served in our country, but pure politics with the aim of infiltrating the Kuril Islands and leading to their rejection.
The refusal of official Tokyo to seriously analyze the proposal of the Russian president, some Japanese publications note, may deprive Japan of hopes of receiving the islands of the Lesser Kuril chain promised by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, encourage Moscow to take an even colder attitude towards negotiations on the “territorial issue” and contribute to further rapprochement Russia with China. And there is a lot of truth in these warnings, because almost 90 percent of our people do not accept the idea of concluding a peace treaty with Japan at the cost of the Kuril Islands. And the Russian leadership, one must understand, knows this very well.
As a result of a public opinion poll conducted by REGNUM news agency, unprecedented in scale and coverage of various segments of the population (about 57,000 people were polled), on the issue of Japanese claims to the Kuril Islands, it turned out that 89 percent of the inhabitants of our country oppose any territorial concessions to Japan. This includes all options for concessions - whether it be four, two or even one island. That is, concessions are unacceptable in principle.
Knowing full well that the Russian people will not allow Japan's territorial claims to the Kuril Islands to be satisfied, Russian President Vladimir Putin nevertheless leaves the door open for negotiations. At the same time, from time to time he throws "logs into the fire" of Japanese hopes and expectations, when he agrees to return to the "Khrushchev compromise" on the transfer of all the islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge to Japan in the form of a gesture of goodwill - Shikotan Island and 18 small islands, shoals and sea stones, called Habomai in Japan, then puzzles the Japanese with a proposal to end the fight of "political judo" in a draw - the notorious "hikiwake". At the same time, we are constantly talking about a clearly unrealistic option to come to an "amicable agreement", in which "there will be neither winners nor losers."
In my opinion, the proposal to conclude a peace treaty before the end of the year without a final resolution of the issue of territorial delimitation has not been thought through to the end. The fact that the Japanese did not agree with this did not surprise me personally, because Tokyo needs a peace treaty that has long become an anachronism and is useless for us for the sole purpose of achieving the inclusion in such a treaty of Russia’s consent to “return the northern territories.” Without this, the Japanese do not need a peace treaty. Therefore, it would be more reasonable to propose signing an interim treaty on good neighborliness and cooperation, although it would not satisfy the Japanese side, which, no offense will be said, openly seeks to use such cooperation primarily to induce Moscow to agree to territorial concessions.
The fact that Abe proposed at the talks in Singapore to place emphasis in the search for a solution to the “territorial issue” precisely on the “Khrushchev compromise” is a manifestation of his fear about the possibility of Moscow’s decision to otherwise completely stop the negotiations on territorial delimitation in view of their senselessness. In Tokyo, they are beginning to realize that, not to mention Kunashir and Iturup, for which the Japanese have no legal grounds for claims, Habomai and Shikotan are far from “in their pocket”, as some people think. We have to explain that for all Putin’s love for Japan, the desire to resolve contradictions to “mutual satisfaction”, even if they agree to fulfill Khrushchev’s voluntaristic promise about Japan’s “gift” of the Lesser Kuril Ridge (Yeltsin promised his “friend Ryu” to give all the southern Kuriles while fishing) Putin will take a serious political risk, because in this case, serious protests await him, both in parliament and outside it. The protesters will remember both the surrender of the islands on the Amur and Ussuri, and the clearly flawed decision to transfer vast water areas rich in marine and energy resources in the Barents Sea to Norway, and concessions to other neighboring countries.
Recent personal experience of communicating with representatives of various strata of Japanese society shows that there are fewer people here who support the uncompromising position of the ruling class on the strict demand of all "northern territories" under the slogan "all or nothing." Particularly strong are the moods in favor of compromise agreements with Russia on the northern island of Hokkaido, where, back in Soviet times, and now even more so, local fishermen declare their interest primarily in safe fishing in the waters bordering Russia, the extraction of marine animals and shellfish, kombu seaweed (Japanese kelp), which is in great demand in Japan.
However, contrary to the obvious fact of Putin's unwillingness and inability to make unjustified and unapproved territorial losses, the Japanese government declares its intention to firmly achieve its goal - to demand the maximum satisfaction of its claims. This was reiterated today by Yoshihide Suga, who voiced the position of the government and personally Prime Minister Abe, stressing that "the basic position on the conclusion of a peace treaty after the decision on the ownership of the northern territories (of all the southern Kuriles - A.K.) remains unchanged." The maximum that the Japanese government can do is not to insist on the immediate surrender of the islands, that is, the willingness to postpone their "receipt". “We are ready to respond flexibly to the timing and circumstances associated with a specific transfer (of the islands). But our basic position is the conclusion of a peace treaty after the issue of ownership of the four northern islands is resolved, there are no changes on this point, ”Suga emphasized. At the same time, according to TASS, he positively assessed the talks held on Wednesday in Singapore between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin, noting that they "gave important inertia (?!) to the development of Japanese-Russian relations."
It is also reported that Abe, following a meeting with Putin in Singapore, told reporters that he would visit Russia in early 2019, and also expressed confidence that "the leaders of the two states will be able to resolve the territorial dispute and conclude a peace treaty."
As for the reaction of President Putin to the option of returning to the conditions of 1956, he was rather restrained. According to Interfax, Putin noted that the day before, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe indicated that Tokyo was ready to return to discussing the problem of a peace treaty based on the 1956 declaration. However, Putin continued, this work requires "a separate, additional, serious study, bearing in mind that the declaration itself is far from clear." “There, in principle, the problem is simply stated that the Soviet Union is ready to transfer two islands, but it is not said on what grounds, under whose sovereignty they fall. This is a matter of serious study. Moreover, Japan itself once refused to implement these agreements,” Putin stressed.
