Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia's most popular dailies, has rented 500 hectares on the disputed Kuril Islands and opened a public competition to decide what to do with the land.


Alexander Afanasyev, a political commentator for the paper, was given the right to rent a seaside piece of land on the island of Iturup for 70 years by the mayor of Iturup and Valentin Fyodorov, the outspoken governor of nearby Sakhalin Island.


He had been in the region to interview Fyodorov, known as an aggressive reformer who is also firmly opposed to turning any part of the contested Kurils over to Japan.


Afanasyev announced an "international contest" in Komsomolskaya Pravda on Friday, asking readers to offer ideas on how the land should be used. He said that Komsomolskaya Pravda would develop the property together with successful contestants as a model of the type of free-economic zone that President Boris Yeltsin has proposed for the islands.


But his announcement dre'v a quick response from a Japanese journalist, who wondered whether the contest did not indicate that the paper was denying Japanese claims to the islands.


"No, not at all", Afanasyev said when asked about the response. "But we think that it makes more sense to solve financial and trade problems than to concentrate on the question of whether the land belongs to Russia or Japan. The idea is simply to make life better on the islands".