Austria’s chancellor visits Russia

Austria’s Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel has started his visit to Russia. The program of the visit is unusual. An official part of the visit is to start on Monday, but the Saturday and Sunday have been devoted to visiting theatres and museums, as the chancellor is a connoisseur of arts. Indeed, after the recent political crisis in the Austrian government Mr.Schussel really needs some rest.

The coming negotiations will be devoted to the problems of bipartite economic cooperation. The countries have achieved considerable progress in the commercial sphere since the last year’s visit of President Putin to Austria. It gained 7% to $1,9 billion over 2001. Besides, both countries are interested in development of their cooperation. But this time supplies of Russian MiG planes to Austria are not to be touched upon. Economic and political aspects of co-operation between Russia and the European Union, which member Austria is, are to be the key topics of the negotiations. Austria holds a rather influential position in the European Union. Compensations to former prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps are to be touched upon during the talks as well. A meeting of Wolfgang Schussel with Federation Council Speaker Sergey Mironov is scheduled during the visit.

So, a political dialogue between Moscow and Vienna continues, but the extent of its effectiveness depends on these talks in Moscow.

Oleg Artyukov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/01/26/36136.html