The foreign ministers of Japan and Russia agreed today to strengthen economic and security co-operation but made no progress on resolving a long-standing territorial dispute that has kept the two nations from concluding a peace treaty.

A POWERFUL undersea earthquake prompted tsunami warnings yesterday for Japan and Russia but the danger appeared to pass after a series of tiny waves hit the northern Japanese coast.

Japan issued a tsunami alert today and told Pacific coast residents to flee to higher ground after a powerful earthquake hit off sparsely populated islands between northern Japan and the Russian Far East.

The fate of four contested islands in the fertile fishing waters of the Sea of Okhotsk was expected to dominate talks today between Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.