New era of cooperation

The leaders of Russia and the European Union hailed the start of a new era of economic and political cooperation yesterday following their first summit meeting since the election of President Vladimir Putin. But Romano Prodi, president of the EU Commission, said Russia still had to do more to attract sorely needed foreign investment and urged Moscow to allow a full and transparent investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Chechnya.

“I am convinced we are really starting a new era of cooperation,” Prodi told a joint news conference with Putin in the Kremlin also attended by other senior EU officials. He said Russia’s improved economic situation, with lower inflation and a tight budget, created the framework for boosting trade between the ex-communist superpower and the 15-nation EU.

Prodi, a former Italian Prime Minister, said the new Putin administration needed to focus now on reforming Russia’s onerous tax regime and securing property rights for foreign investors. The EU already accounts for some 40 percent of Russia’s foreign trade and Prodi said the figure would rise to around 60 percent as the bloc expands to include former Soviet satellite states in central and eastern Europe. Addressing Russian concerns about this expansion, Prodi said Moscow stood to gain from the emergence of a single market with lower tariffs and more than 500 million consumers with high incomes – twice the population of the United States.

Putin said yesterday’s talks had been “very constructive, very frank and very fruitful” and said Russia was committed to closer ties with the EU in a wide range of spheres, including security. He said Russia was cooperating with international organisations in rebel Chechnya, where its eight-month military campaign against Islamic guerrillas has drawn strong criticism in Western capitals as excessively brutal.

But Putin, who says Moscow is fighting “international terrorists” in Chechnya, made clear cooperation had its limits. “We are categorically opposed to any thesis of human rights being used to try to prevent Russia from bringing order to that territory,” said Putin, a former KGB spy elected on March 26. Reuters