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Igor IVANOV: The talks between the Russian President and the President of the European Commission Mr Prodi focused on two issues: the situation in Iraq and Russia-EU relations. With regard to the Iraqi problem, the Russian President expressed his generally positive attitude towards the EU joint summit statement on Iraq adopted yesterday.
The positions of Russia and the European Union on Iraq are close in general. We are both for the central role to be played by the United Nations and the Security Council in settling this problem, for Iraq’s disarmament and the continuation of the inspectors’ work there. We think that Iraq bears special responsibility for the success of the inspectors’ mission, which should give guarantees to the international community that Iraq does not have any weapons of mass destruction or the potential for their production.
This will allow us to continue our joint work in order to solve this problem. We have agreed on our further close interaction in the interests of a political settlement of the situation in Iraq.
Russia-EU relations is a priority of our foreign policy. We believe they have reached a qualitatively new level requiring the perfection of the mechanism of these relations, so as to earlier and more efficiently cope with the problems of bilateral cooperation.
The problems arising in connection with the EU expansion were also discussed. We think it is necessary to conduct negotiations with EU organisations, so that EU expansion, which is generally welcomed by Russia, will not have any negative consequences for Russia’s relations with new EU members. The sooner we start discussing these issues, the faster we can take them off the agenda without any such consequences.
President Putin also focused on problems arising in connection with the visa rules introduced by new EU members. As a matter of fact, these rules are becoming an obstacle to contacts between Russian and EU citizens. We must tackle this issue together because artificial barriers may have a negative effect not only on contacts between people but also on our cooperation in various spheres. The Russian President’s proposal on a transition to a visa-free regime in future is well known. The European Union’s reaction was generally positive, therefore President Putin proposed examining concrete issues which could help to achieve this goal. It is expedient to set up a working group which could start discussing some concrete aspects of this problem.