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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Your Highness, guests, friends, let me wish you a warm welcome to Moscow.

We were looking forward to your visit since last autumn. I hope the efforts we have made to build relations between our countries over these last years will provide a good foundation for our next steps, including now, during your visit, which we hope will give an additional boost to our ties.

We need to discuss cooperation and coordination of approaches in the energy sector, particularly in the gas sector, look at investment cooperation, and discuss the situation in the region.

Qatar is one of the important players in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. We hope to discuss the situation with you, exchange views and look for solutions and responses to the most serious and complicated problems.

Welcome!

Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani (retranslated): Mr President, let me start by thanking you, the Russian Government and the Russian people for your hospitality. I am happy to be here in Moscow today.

As you noted, Mr President, our two countries have pursued high-level coordination over recent years. We also hope that this will serve as a solid foundation for taking our relations to an even higher level.

As you said, we have plenty to discuss. We have common interests in the energy sector, in the gas sector, and Russia and Qatar are both members of the GECF [ Background information Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) Gas Exporting Countries Forum].

We see our investment cooperation as very important. Many positive results have been achieved of late. I am thinking here above all of the cooperation with the RDIF [Russian Direct Investment Fund] in different investment areas.

Naturally, we will discuss the situation in the Middle East: the latest developments and the problems the region faces.

Russia plays a fundamental role in global stability today and we hope to develop our relations with Russia and find solutions to a number of problems concerning stability in some of our region’s countries.

Once more, thank you very much for this cooperation.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

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