(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-29 08:33

Battle Lines

EU President Slovenia wants the ministers to agree a common line for the EU's first summit with Medvedev in Siberia in June.

"We have a post-Putin but still half-Putin era," said one EU official. "What are we doing with it? Can we go the same way, do we want to go the same way or change?"

Another EU official said he expected the battle lines would be the same as usual on ties with Moscow.

"The French, Germans, Italians and British want to move forward, the Nordics will criticise the absence of...observers at the elections, and the Baltics and Poles will raise their neighbourhood problems with Russia," he said.

Separately, EU and Russian officials discussed Moscow's long-delayed World Trade Organisation bid on Thursday but did not reach a breakthrough on the stumbling block issue of Russia's export duties, a European Commission spokesman said.

Analyst Mark Leonard at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank urged the EU to put its relations with Russia under formal review to iron out what he said were deep-rooted differences on how to deal with Moscow.

"There is no real agreement among member states about what kind of country we are dealing with ... that's why the relationship keeps getting held up by bilateral problems."

   1 2   

   1 2