EU leaders will hold a summit today for the first time with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to launch talks on a new “strategic partnership,” including sensitive subjects like energy and Georgia.
Ahead of the first summit with the successor to former Russian president Vladimir Putin, during whose term there was a sharp deterioration in EU-Russia ties, the European Commission hoped to build “the foundation for a more constructive and forward-looking relationship.”
The EU’s executive arm said it was “encouraged” by the declarations of the new Russian leader, who took over last month.
“The signs are very positive, on modernization of the economy, reduced state control ... the importance of media freedom and the role of civil society,” the commission said.
However, Brussels mindful that Putin handpicked Medvedev needs “to find out how he intends to implement these policies.”
Moscow’s EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, also spoke of “opening a new chapter in the relationship between Russia and the EU,” to be represented by commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa as EU president and foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
Though the strategic talks will be launched at the two-day summit in Siberia and start in earnest on July 4, no one is talking about a date to finish them.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
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