TOKYO - A RUSSIAN strategic bomber briefly entered Japanese airspace over the Pacific south of Tokyo on Saturday, prompting 22 Japanese military aircraft to scramble, officials said.

The foreign ministry said it had immediately filed a strong protest with the Russian embassy over the incident which occurred for about three minutes from 7.30am (6.30am Singapore time).

'We have asked the Russian government to make a thorough investigation into the matter,' a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The air defence force scrambled 22 planes, including F-15 fighters, and chased out the plane with a radio warning, the ministry said.

It was the first Russian violation of Japanese airspace since January 2006, it added.

Russia and Japan have had uneasy ties. The two countries have never signed a peace treaty to formally end World War II due to a dispute over four islands off Japan's northern coast seized by Soviet troops in 1945.

The Japanese government said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda hoped to visit Moscow early this year and believed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was serious about resolving the island dispute.

Japan, which has been officially pacifist since World War II, is a close US ally and home to more than 40,000 US troops. -- AFP

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