Putin: No Treaty for Protecting Finnish Investments Is Not Russia's Fault

The treaty for protecting Finnish investments in Russia will not become economically and politically justifiable for Russia until after she has been given the official recognition as a country with market economy, said Russian President Putin at his meeting with his Finnish counterpart Tarja Halonen.

As Finnish Helsingin Sanomat wrote today, Putin's statement meant basically that Russia would only sign the treaty once she has been recognised as a WTO member-to-be. The newspaper believes the odds of that happening within the next few years to be slim, one of the reasons being a number of discrepancies between the Russian law and WTO requirements.

For her part Tarja Halonen suggesting creating in St. Petersburg a special zone for Russian-Finnish cooperation. According to Helsingin Sanomat, Putin agreed to the proposal.