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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, colleagues,

We are very glad to see all of you in Sochi.

Mr President, this is not your first visit to Russia. I hope your stay in Sochi and participation in the Russia-Africa summit will leave you with the most positive impressions and will further promote relations between Russia and Equatorial Guinea.

We consider your country to be a promising partner for Russia. Our interstate cooperation is traditionally friendly. Last year, we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of our diplomatic relations.

We maintain continuous political dialogue. Recently we signed an agreement on cooperation between the upper houses of our parliaments. Our foreign ministries also stay in contact.

Mr President, we are grateful to you for your invariable support of a number of our initiatives at international venues, including the UN. This applies to the problems of glorifying Nazism. You voted for the draft resolutions on international information security and on not being the first to deploy weapons in space, to name a few.

I would like to note that, regrettably, indicators of our trade are still unstable. It is going up and down. I think we must improve this situation by joint efforts and make our cooperation more stable.

We believe we have the best prospects of cooperation in geological prospecting, joint mining and processing of hydrocarbons, construction infrastructure and electric power engineering.

Resumption of the work by our energy working group could provide a major impetus for energy cooperation. I hope we will discuss all these issues today.

President of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (retranslated): Thank you very much, Mr President.

First of all, I would like to thank you for your invitation and for a warm welcome right from our arrival in Sochi Airport. I would like to thank you for your hospitality and for holding this meeting.

This was a wonderful event indeed. We would like to congratulate you on this success and also tell you that Equatorial Guinea signed two agreements during the First Russia-Africa Summit.

We think Russia must be the number one partner of Equatorial Guinea, although we cooperate with many countries, including Russia. We would like to develop economic cooperation on a large scale. This is why we signed two agreements – one with Lukoil in the oil and gas sector and the other with RosGeo in the geological sector. They will also work with Equatorial Guinea.

Of course, we would like to work with Russian companies. They could take part in the development of our state. Our country offers favourable conditions for foreign investment. So we would like to thank you for this meeting and urge Russian companies to invest in Equatorial Guinea.

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