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President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Mr Secretary General, I would like to welcome you to Moscow, and I want to start by saying that cooperation with OPEC is a key priority for our energy agencies and for the development and coordination of our energy policy in general. We have good relations with the organisation itself and with the individual member countries, and we intend to continue building on these relations. The reason for this is absolutely clear: Russia is also a major oil producer and exporter, and has an interest in maintaining stable and predictable oil prices. We therefore hope that the meetings you will have in Moscow and the joint events you will take part in will be productive and useful.

Secretary General of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Abdalla Salem El-Badri: Thank you, Mr President,

It is a great pleasure and honour to be here in Moscow with our delegation and secretariat. We know that you have a very busy schedule but you have nonetheless found the time to meet with us, and we thank you for this.

The conference has already given us the opportunity to meet with the deputy prime minister, and today we met with the minister. We met with the deputy prime minister in Vienna and discussed in detail the situation regarding oil resources on the world market.

It was a detailed discussion of the situation on the world market that we had, and I said quite frankly that we will discuss all of these issues at the OPEC meeting on October 24, that is to say, the day after tomorrow.