Official website of the President of Russia

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President Vladimir Putin: Dear Mr President,

Let me once again wish you a warm welcome to Moscow.

Yesterday evening we had the opportunity to spend almost three hours discussing practically all the questions of concern to us.

As we agreed, today we will have further opportunities to discuss a whole number of issues, both one-on-one and together with our colleagues.

Before we begin our talks, I would like to say that I am satisfied with how our relations have been developing recently. This year marks the 120th anniversary of the signing of the first friendship and cooperation agreement that was the starting point for establishing diplomatic relations between our countries. We have celebrated this event, and I must say that much has been done to develop our relations over all these years.

Our economic ties are developing intensively. We have managed to remove all the barriers and difficulties in this area that were hampering our cooperation. Today we have not a single problem of this kind.

Our statistics differ a little on the figures, but according to the experts both here and in your country, our bilateral trade increased by well over 50 percent over the first half of this year. This is a really excellent result.

Russia has very close and longstanding ties with Korea. More than 100,000 ethnic Koreans hold Russian citizenship and live in this country.

Mr President, this is your first visit to Russia and I am sure that it will be a successful visit.

President Roh Moo Hyun: First of all I would like express my sincere thanks to you, Mr President, and to the Russian people for the warm welcome I have received. As you rightly said, yesterday evening we did have the chance to discuss many of the questions that concern our two countries frankly and calmly, and I thank you for that evening.

Russia and Korea established diplomatic relations 120 years ago, and 140 years have passed since the first Korean immigrants began to establish themselves in Russia. Since we re-established our relations we have also developed our ties in all areas quite well over the last 14 years. I think that it is our mutually complementary partnership and the trust we have built up in each other that have made this possible.

In particular, we consider that Russia has become politically very stable and that its economy is developing rapidly since you became president. This has created greater interest in Russia among our people. I think, therefore, that our relations in all areas are set to develop even more intensively than before.

Moscow lies within the European continent, but Russia plays an important part in North-East Asia.

We are grateful to the Russian Government for its active involvement in the process underway to establish peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and throughout our region.

We believe that Russia plays a constructive and important part in bringing peace and prosperity to our region.

I know that you are very much interested in the question of developing the resources of Eastern Siberia. Your policy in this area is also of interest and importance to us.

It is our view that economic and trade ties will help speed up development of our bilateral relations.

I hope that our meeting today will also make a great contribution to the ongoing development of our relations. Thank you.