PORTUGAL: Russian President Vladimir PutinEU-Russia Summit comparing U.S. missile shield to Cuban crisis

Russian President Vladimir PutinEU-Russia Summit comparing U.S. missile shield to Cuban crisis and reiterating that he will not run for a third term. EU chief Barroso says he is confident Russia World Trade Organisation issues will be solved. Russia's President Vladimir Putin drew a parallel on Friday (October 26) between U.S. plans for a missile shield in Europe and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, widely regarded as the closest the world came to nuclear war. "I would remind you how relations were developing in an analogous situation in the middle of the 1960s," he said when asked at a news conference about Washington's plans to station elements of a missile defence shield in eastern Europe. "Analogous actions by the Soviet Union when it deployed rockets on Cuba provoked the Caribbean missile crisis," Putin said after an EU-Russia summit in Portugal. "For us, technologically, the situation is very similar. On our borders such threats to our country are being created," he added. Participating in his last European Summit as a president, Putin reiterated that he has no intention to modify his country's law in order to run for a third term. "As I have mentioned several times, I am not going to change my institutions to serve my own needs. According to the main law of the country, I am not going to run for a third term presidency, I am not going to change the main law. As for my future work, I haven't decided yet where and how I am going to work," he said. According to the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, the summit brought a significant progress on the issues preventing the EU from signing off on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organisation. "Today we had an opportunity to give an impetus to the negotiation on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organisation. We have narrowed down remaining issues between us, to just two issues. We have discussed those issues today, I am confident that those issues are solvable and both sides need to make rapid efforts to solve them," Barroso said. Progress was also made on the human rights issue, according to the European Council President Jose Socrates who welcomed an initiative from Putin on the creation of a EU-Russia Human Rights institute. "We heard the proposal by President Putin of an Euro-Russian institute devoted to promote human rights in the two politic blocks, dedicated to its defence (human rights). It is a step in a right direction. We are going to study the proposal and will discuss it in detail with the Russian side," Socrates told reporters attending the final news conference of the summit. EU governments and rights groups say Russia under Putin has squeezed democracy, gagged freedom of speech and used sometimes brutal methods to suppress Islamist insurgencies in its North Caucasus region. Putin says most of the criticism is unfounded and accuses Western governments of using rights as a pretext to try to interfere in Russia's domestic affairs. After the one-day meeting, EU's Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said the meeting will be remembered as one of the most positive encounters between Russia and the European Union. "If I look back, I have to tell you that this period of time has been very constructive, very positive for the relationship between the European Union and the Russian Federation," he said.

ITN Source | October 27, 2007

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