Medvedev and Berlusconi discuss bilateral relations in Krasnaya Polyana

On 3 December, President Medvedev and his Italian counterpart had a meeting in Krasnaya Polyana. It is their seventh meeting in this format, which the two leaders consider a success. The meeting resulted in 7 multilateral agreements including ones on cooperation in modernization, economy, migration and defense.

Just on the eve of the consultations in Sochi, Dmitry Medvedev and Silvio Berlusconi met at the OSCE summit in Astana and before that at the Russia-NATO summit in Lisbon. They both have similar opinions of those summits: the OSCE potential is not being used to the full and, as for NATO, its policy has changed in recent year. Berlusconi believes that recognizing Russia as an important strategic partner is a great step forward which has put an end to the Cold War. And Dmitry Medvedev is convinced that cooperation with the North-Atlantic alliance can be more active, especially in the issue of anti-missile defence.

Russia and Italy have a task of reaching the pre-crisis level of turnover. Apart from that, Russia is interested in the leading EU countries taking part in the modernization of the Russian economy, Dmitry Medvedev said.

Россия заинтересована в том, чтобы ведущие страны Евросоюза принимали участие в модернизации российской экономики. Нам нужны и технологии, и навыки, и кадровая поддержка. И в этом смысле, конечно, мы рассчитываем на то, что такого рода отношения будут развиваться и с Италией.

Russian-Italian agreements have been concluded about bilateral partnership in modernization and about cooperation in the development of small and medium-size businesses. As Silvio Berlusconi pointed out after the agreements were signed, many Italian companies are willing to work in the Russian market and Russian business is already widely represented in Italy. Rome is open for further development of partnership, the Italian prime minister stressed.

Besides that Moscow and Rome have signed an agreement about transit of military cargoes and personnel through Russian territory to Kabul.

At the end of the meeting, Silvio Berlusconi congratulated Dmitry Medvedev on the victory of the Russian bid to host the world football championship. He did not fail to mention his personal role. In Berlusconi’s words, Italy gave its vote for Russia and also convinced some other European friends of the advantages of the Russian bid.

Source: Kremlin.ru, The Voice of Russia