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| EU, Russia paper over discord at Helsinki summit |
| 25.11.06 11:50 |
European trends |
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Russia and Europe announced a long-awaited deal on EU airline flights at a summit in Helsinki in a bid to play down discord after a Polish veto on EU partnership talks with Moscow.
"There was an agreement on Siberian overflights," EU presidency spokesman Mikko Norros said, referring to an agreement to phase out taxes paid to Russia by European airlines to end a 20-year dispute.
But EU and Russian leaders were barely able to hide their differences over key trade, energy and international issues in what EU officials said had been "frank" and "substantive" discussions.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso urged Russia at a news conference after the summit to lift an embargo on Polish meat imports that Moscow imposed last year on food safety grounds, calling it "disproportionate."
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would not break up state-controlled gas giant Gazprom, despite EU calls for companies operating in Europe's energy market to divide power generation from transmission.
Putin also warned the European Union that independence for the southern Serbian province of Kosovo would set a precedent and have repercussions in other regional conflicts, an EU official said.
Ahead of the summit, Poland blocked planned discussions on a new accord to replace the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between Brussels and Moscow, which formally runs out next year.
"We will patiently wait until European countries will agree their position," Putin said after the meeting, emphasising that the current PCA would continue until a new accord is put in place.
Putin on Thursday defended the Russian ban that prompted Poland's decision to veto talks as a "technical problem" not linked to "political tricks" and called for negotiations to resolve the issue.
The dispute with Poland has highlighted divisions within the European Union on policy towards Russia, which accounts for around a third of EU energy imports and is a major market for European companies.
In an apparent counter to the Polish veto, Russia stressed concerns about the standards of EU meat imports as a whole after swine fever outbreaks in Bulgaria and Romania, which are set to join the EU in January.
The EU's enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said in an interview with Finnish television on Thursday that Russia's food safety concerns were part of "a political game" intended "to put pressure on the EU."
EU meat exports to Russia are worth around 1.7 billion euros (2.2 billion dollars) per year and EU officials said earlier that restrictions on Bulgaria and Romania are already in place.
At the summit, Putin also repeated Russia's refusal to ratify the Energy Charter Treaty, which Moscow signed in 1994, in spite of EU calls for its adoption, an official in the Russian delegation said.
"At the same time, we support the basic principles of the charter and we are ready to discuss the inclusion of these principles of this charter in a future agreement," the official said.
Russia faced further pressure on the sidelines of the summit after Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant-colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service, died from suspected poisoning in London late on Thursday.
Litvinenko was a Kremlin critic and some of his friends have accused Russia of being behind the killing. Russian secret services have denied any involvement.
At a press conference following the summit, Putin said accusations of Russian official involvement in Litvinenko's death were a "political provocation" and called the poisoning "a tragedy."
Putin also hit back against criticism of Russia over contract killings, saying such crimes were common in Europe where there were "hundreds" of "political murders."
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said EU leaders had "raised... concern regarding the ongoing investigations on Anna Politkovskaya," an investigative journalist shot dead in Moscow last month.
EU and Russian leaders also met on Friday with prime ministers Geir Haarde of Iceland and Jens Stoltenberg of Norway for talks on cooperation in northern Europe. |
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