The statement from Russia's top general is likely to infuriate the Japanese government that is already seething from an unprecedented November visit to the Kuril Islands by President Dmitry Medvedev.

The sides failed to make any progress on the escalating row during a recent visit to Moscow by the Japanese foreign minister and have instead continued waging an angry war of words that appears to be becoming more heated with time.

Chief of Staff General Nikolai Makarov kept up the pressure on Friday by revealing that the Russia was on the verge of sending at least one of its recently-purchased French Mistral helicopter carriers to the region.

"We do not exclude that one or possibly two Mistrals will be sent to the Pacific Fleet, including for the purpose of addressing security issues in the Kuril Islands," Makarov told the Interfax news agency.

Russia has signed a contract to purchase two Mistral helicopter carriers from France in a deal that has been criticised by some of France's NATO partners.

Moscow will also build two more Mistrals using French know-how at a later time. But Makarov stressed that Russia planned to dispatch the warships that will be built in France first.

"We are not certain yet if it will be the first helicopter carrier or the second," said Makarov.

The warships' sale has also been strongly condemned by Georgia -- a nation that waged a five-day war with Russia in 2008 and which feared that the Mistrals may be used to cut it off from access to the Black Sea.

The wind-swept Pacific archipelago -- which is still known as the Northern Territories in Japan -- was claimed by the Soviet army in the dying days of World War II.

The dispute has prevented both the signature of a Russian-Japanese peace treaty formally ending World War II hostilities and kept Japanese investments to a minimum in Russia's underdeveloped Far East.

Tokyo says its claim on the southernmost four islands is backed by the fact that the Soviet Union never signed a 1951 peace treaty formally establishing post-war borders in the Pacific.

But the Kremlin's top foreign policy adviser said earlier this month that the islands' status "will not be subject to any review -- either today or tomorrow".

Russia's Mistral announcement comes less than a month after Medvedev vowed to step up his country's defence of the island chain in a statement that was scoffed at as meaningless in Tokyo.

A spokesman for the Japanese foreign minister said during the February 11 talks in Moscow that a Russian decision to send Mistrals to the Kurils would be treated as a hostile act.

"We are against any steps that can escalate the situations," foreign Japanese ministry spokesman Satoru Sato told reporters at the time.

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