Agence France Presse | Nov. 6, 2003
ROME (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin won support from the European Union for Russia's membership of the World Trade Organisation by the end of next year at a summit with EU leaders overshadowed by controversy over the Yukos affair and Chechnya.
"We reiterated the willingness to work together in order that Russia can enter the WTO before the end of 2004," European Commission President Romano Prodi told reporters after the summit, naming a date previously considered optimistic by Russian officials.
A joint declaration released after the meeting said both sides were convinced that Moscow's membership of the Geneva-based trade body was both "possible and desirable" by the end of next year.
The boost for WTO membership was the main development of the 12th EU-Russia summit, the last before several of Moscow's former satellites join the EU in May.
Even though the joint declaration made no mention of the controversy, Prodi conceded the Yukos affair was a "problem", adding that the Russian leader had assured the summit meeting "that the law would not be applied in a discriminatory manner".
The summit coincided with the White House raising "serious concerns" over the Kremlin's arrest of the oil giant's former boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a powerful political opponent of Putin.
Vowing that he would not give in to "any blackmail" over the affair, Putin launched a highly-personalised attack on a journalist from French daily Le Monde, implying he was being paid to harass the Kremlin about Yukos.
"As far as Mr Khodorkovsky is concerned, this bears no relation to cooperation between Russia and the EU, but if this problem interests you, I understand you were put up to it, you must earn your fee."
Referring to tycoons he did not identify, he said they would spend "tens of millions" of dollars to protect their money.
"We know how this money is spent -- on what lawyers, on what companies and firms, on what politicians, including so these types of questions get asked."
"Our aim is not to catch these people in particular, but to bring order to the country, and we will do it with insistence and firmness, whatever the attempts by these people to defend themselves, and even their use of blackmail," said Putin.
"Blackmail against the power of the state is in vain."
To compound matters, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of current EU president Italy leapt to the defense of his friend, lashing out at the European media for "telling tales" about the situation in the war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya, where Moscow is accused of gross human rights violations.
Berlusconi's view was that Moscow was responding to terrorist attacks in Chechnya.
"As a real friend of the Russian Federation, and with all the esteem I have for Mr Putin, I don't understand why they continue to tell tales," he told reporters.
A joint declaration released after the four-hour meeting, which took in a working lunch in a Renaissance villa outside Rome, described the discussions were "intensive and productive".
Key topics were four areas that form the nucleus of long-term Russia-EU ties -- a common economic space, internal security, external security, and science research and education.
The document said the 15-nation bloc and Moscow had agreed "to intensify and focus our efforts to fulfill the decision to create common spaces between the EU and Russia ... (and) expressed strong determination to produce concrete results."
Berlusconi said progress had been made on Russia's demand for eventual visa-free movement, with both sides forseeing the "complete abolition of visas" in the medium term and, for some categories, even sooner.
"The West and the Russian Federation have become engaged, and I hope one day we will have a marriage," Berlusconi quipped.
However, Prodi cautioned that "there's no concrete solution at the moment," on the visa question.
On the WTO, European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said at a separate press conference that Russia's admission "assumes that negotiations advance on many fronts."
"We have problems on energy, a very sensitive question in Russia," he added.
The commissioner said EU officials contend that "the fact that Russian manufacturers pay five times less than their European counterparts for gas to make fertilizer, for example, raises competition concerns."Agence France Presse:
