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Secretary General of the League of Arab State Amr Moussa: Once again, it is our pleasure to welcome President Vladimir Putin to the League of Arab States during his historic visit to this region. We are pleased, in this respect, to be able to declare that Russian-Arab relations have received a powerful new boost to their bilateral development in all areas, and this is partly the result of the balanced policy Russia is following in our region under President Putin’s leadership.

I think that Mr Putin’s comments following his speech during this historic visit will also be of interest to you.

President Vladimir Putin: First of all, I would like to thank the Secretary General for the invitation to visit the League of Arab States. This is not our first meeting. We have permanent high-level contacts with this organisation. The League of Arab States was founded 60 years ago, a very symbolic date, given that it also marked the end of the Second World War. The League acts on the basis of international law and is the world’s most authoritative organisation, the chief organisation, working on the issues facing the Arab nation in general. We should give the League of Arab States its due, for it has managed to find carefully considered and balanced approaches to many very complex international issues.

During our talks today, we discussed Middle East peace settlement, the problem of Iraq and a number of other issues that are of interest both to Russia and to the Arab world.

We intend to develop further our relations with the League of Arab States and we are grateful to the Secretary General for supporting these plans and for helping in every way to build up relations between Russia and the League of Arab States.

Thank you.