President Putin declares Russia-US intention to build new economic relations

Russia and the USA are oriented to building new relations in the economic field, Vladimir Putin told a press-conference on the results of Russian-US talks on Friday.

"The mentality of our businessmen is similar in many respects - the same skill, vigor and promptness," he said. "Our task is to constantly open new prospects and possibilities for businessmen," believes the president.

We should get rid of the obstacles we inherited from the past, he stressed. In his words, the point at issue is not only the recognition of Russia as a country with a market economy and not so much the survivals of the past, like the Jackson-Vanik amendment. The agenda of the day includes such issues as the elimination of the administrative barriers preventing Russia and the USA from establishing productive cooperation, including in high-tech fields, which determine the configuration of the world economy at the beginning of the 21st century. These are aerospace industries, informatics and telecommunications, science and education, new sources of energy.

In connection with this, Vladimir Putin noted that during the talks the sides had paid special attention to cooperation in power engineering, including nuclear. Full-scale Russian-US cooperation in this field can become an important element of a stable development of the global economy as a whole, the president believes.