Russian Foreign Minister: Kaliningrad negotiations have reached a ticklish stage

Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov stated that presently the negotiations between Russia and the European Union on the Kaliningrad issue reached "a delicate stage". On Friday he held negotiations in Moscow with the European Union's "three" during which they also considered the Kaliningrad problem.

According to the minister, at the present stage "the parties are agreeing certain issues behind closed doors" and "it is not yet clear which agreements will be reached." At the same time the Russian foreign minister was of the opinion that in the last months "significant progress began to show" on the Kaliningrad matter. According to Ivanov, if three months ago everybody was talking "abstractly" on this subject, then presently "everybody clearly understood what they were talking about." According to the Russian minister, at the present stage all secondary issues are resolved and only "two or three essential problems" remain.