(Adds comment by second Japanese official in paragraphs 10-11)

By Christian Lowe

MOSCOW, April 26 (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will seek Moscow's support for a new global initiative to curb greenhouse gases on Saturday when he has his first meeting with Russia's outgoing and incoming presidents.

Japanese officials said a territorial dispute over four islands in the Pacific -- a running sore in relations since World War Two -- will be touched on only briefly.

Japan will host this year's Group of Eight summit on its northern island of Hokkaido and has placed finding a more effective replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012, at the top of the summit agenda.

Fukuda is to have talks on Saturday with president-elect Dmitry Medvedev, who will be sworn in as head of state on May 7, and with President Vladimir Putin, who is stepping down but will stay on as prime minister and remain an influential player.

The main aims of Fukuda's visit are to "establish a personal relationship of trust with President Putin and president-elect Medvedev, and second, to prepare for the upcoming G8 summit," said a Japanese foreign ministry official.

Tokyo hopes the G8 summit will help draft a climate change agreement that would embrace the biggest polluters such as the United States, China and India. None of these has signed up to the Kyoto Protocol's limits on emissions.

Russia, a G8 member, was one of the biggest emerging economies to sign up to Kyoto commitments. Japanese officials hope Moscow will support a successor agreement in Hokkaido.

The disputed islands, known in Russia as the Southern Kuriles and in Japan as the Northern Territories, lie just north of the G8 summit venue in Hokkaido.

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They were seized by Soviet troops in the last days of World War Two, and since then neither side has recognised the other's sovereignty over them. The issue has prevented Russia and Japan from signing a treaty ending wartime hostilities.

Fukuda will urge the Russian leaders to accelerate talks aimed at resolving the territorial row, a senior Japanese government official said.

"Prime Minister Fukuda is expected to tell them that it is indispensable for the two countries to advance negotiations in a concrete fashion in order to elevate bilateral ties to a higher dimension," the official said.

Russia has said it is ready to talk about the dispute, but has given no sign it is prepared to give up the islands. "There is no change in our position. We do not expect any breakthroughs (in the talks with Fukuda)," said a Kremlin official.

Trade between Russia and Japan was worth $20 billion in 2007, fuelled by automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp which has set up a factory to tap into the booming Russian market.

But trade is far smaller than the volumes between Russia and its biggest trading partner, the European Union.

Japan says it is a natural partner to help Russia achieve its ambition of developing its Far East region, a huge and sparsely-populated area of largely untapped energy resources.

Japanese firms have taken stakes in vast oil and gas projects on Russia's Pacific Sakhalin island, and a pipeline is under construction that will eventually deliver oil from eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast.

- For a factbox on Japanese-Russian relations, click on [nL25269608]

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