Official website of the President of Russia

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The President of Russia arrived in the Republic of Singapore on a three-day state visit to attend the Russia – Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and the 13^th East Asia Summit.

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Beginning of the meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Prime Minister, colleagues, friends.

I am very pleased to see you again. I remember back in 2003 I presented you with an Order of Friendship when I was in your country.

Over the years, we have maintained, by and large, fairly good relations between our countries. In the first eight months of the current year bilateral trade grew by over 60 percent. However, much can still be done, and much, I think, could have been done in previous years.

I am very pleased to see you and discuss all these opportunities.

Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad: I am very glad indeed to meet you again. I hope that with our meeting we can look into the relationship between Malaysia and Russia. I hope that we can increase our trade. Our trade is quite good, but we can do better.

There is an economic, scientific, technical and cultural agreement.

Remark: We are now finalising the co-chair of the committee, and once we finalise that, we can continue with the meeting.

Mahathir Mohamad: As you know, we have a number of Russian aircraft. I think we need to learn more about how to maintain and repair the aircraft.

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