LUXEMBOURG/FRANCE: Russian President Vladimir Putin does business with EU despite tensions, visit latest

Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed booming business ties with Luxembourg on a visit to the tiny Grand Duchy on Thursday (May 24) and played down growing tensions between Moscow and the European Union. The Kremlin leader, at loggerheads with the EU over Kosovo, relations with some of Moscow's former communist neighbours and access to Russia's energy sector, saw the signing of several business and banking deals and dangled the prospect of more. Speaking at a joint news conference with Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean Claude Juncker , Putin blamed new central European members for importing disputes with Russia into the European Union, poisoning ties. Juncker, the EU's longest serving leader and chairman of the euro currency zone, acknowledged remaining "divergences of view" on human rights and some international issues but said they also had much in common, highlighting EU support for Russia to join the World Trade Organisation and the OECD economic club. Putin came from a stop over in Austria on Wednesday. Kremlin watchers say his European tour is intended to show he can still do business with individual national capitals of the 27-state bloc, with which he held a testy summit last week in Samara. The seven-hour stay was due to mark the formal signing of a power generation joint venture between Russian gas giant Gazprom and Soteg, Luxembourg's main gas and electricity supplier, plus a Russian-Luxembourg banking cooperation pact. Yet on the political front grievances between Russia and Europe continue to mount. They include differences over the Serbian province Kosovo, with Moscow threatening to veto a U.N. plan for independence, and a row over a Russian ban on Polish meat imports. EU leaders insist they continue to press Putin over human rights in Russia despite the fact that imports of Russian energy are vital to the European economy. The European Parliament on Thursday said ties between the EU and Russia may suffer unless Moscow acts to ease tension with Estonia. Sour relations between Russia the former Soviet republic that joined the EU in 2004 have deteriorated further after the Baltic state last month moved a Soviet memorial to World War Two soldiers from the centre of the capital to a military cemetery. The EU's lawmakers also gave a Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov a platform to launch a stinging attack on Putin. The former chess champion now leading Russia's United Civil Front urged the EU to use its weight to press for a free and democratic presidential election in Russia next year. Russian authorities prevented him and other protesters from travelling to a Russia-EU summit last week. "We don't want EU nor the US to interfere in our domestic affairs. What we want is them to stop supporting Putin directly by treating him as one of equals. They should state this obvious, that's my message here in Strasbourg. The rest is our business, our domestic affairs. Each time the Union acts as if everything's normal in Russia, it jeopardizes our efforts towards democracy," Kasparov said. A decision by British prosecutors this week to seek the extradition of a former KGB agent on suspicion of murdering Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London is likely to add to the political pressure.

ITN Source | May 25, 2007

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