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Co-operation tops summit
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RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin kicked off a Russia-EU summit in the Kremlin yesterday with trade, security and environment co-operation and EU expansion topping a packed agenda.
Putin opened the one-day meeting with talks at the Kremlin with Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU and leads the delegation.
European Commission President Romano Prodi and foreign policy supremo Javier Solana were to join them later, with the Russian side represented by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
Solana said earlier that one major topic at the Moscow summit would be the prospects for boosting the economic partnership between the powerful 15-nation bloc and Russia.
Participants would "focus on matters of economic co-operation that are important for the entire world community", said Solana.
Moscow is pushing for the EU to stop its anti-dumping investigations against Russian steel exporters, denouncing then as "discriminatory".
It also wants the European Investment Bank to extend its operations in Russia and for Brussels to back Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organisation.
Both sides are keen to expand energy co-operation. The plan is to increase Russian energy supplies to EU and ensure a flow of EU investments and technologies into the Russian fuel and energy sector.
EU expansion into Eastern Europe and its consequences for Russia were to feature prominently at the summit, including the future of Kaliningrad and questions of transit.
Russia is concerned that Kaliningrad could become entirely surrounded by EU member states, if its neighbours Poland and Lithuania join the European Union after 2003.
"We think that EU expansion is a positive process but it must take into account Russia's interests in the form of an agreement before the decision on EU expansion is adopted", President Vladimir Putin's top foreign policy advisor, Sergei Prikhodko, told ITAR-TASS.
International issues include the conflicts in the Middle East and the Balkans and the situation in the divided Korean Peninsula.(SD-Agencies)
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