TOKYO, Nov 30, 2009 (AFP) - Japan's 'excessively emotional' stance in a long-running territorial row with Russia is counterproductive and threatening progress towards a resolution, a top Kremlin official said here Monday.

Tokyo and Moscow have long disputed a string of four islands north of Japan's Hokkaido island - called the Southern Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan - which were seized by Soviet troops in 1945.

The spat over the archipelago, now controlled by Russia, has stopped the countries from signing a post-World War II peace treaty.

The Kremlin's chief of staff, Sergei Naryshkin, in Japan to meet Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, also urged 'mutual consideration and respect.'

He singled out remarks by Japan's Land Minister Seiji Maehara who said last month that Soviet Russia had captured the islets 'illegally.'

That Japan 'defines its extreme position by making those remarks publicly is an excessively emotional approach, and is counterproductive,' Naryshkin, speaking through an interpreter, told a forum.

'In order to have a productive dialogue, unnecessary emotions that only serve to turn up the political heat should be avoided,' he added.

Hatoyama in September resolved together with Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev to find a solution to the dispute.

Hatoyama's grandfather Ichiro Hatoyama was the first Japanese prime minister to visit the Soviet Union and concluded a bilateral pact in 1956 which officially ended the state of war and restored diplomatic relations.