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Putin seeks increased cooperation with Asia-Pacific

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November 15, 2000 

MOSCOW-- (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is bringing several ambitious economic plans to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum this week, as he seeks to increase Russia's role in the region and the world.

Putin departed from Mongolia on Tuesday and flew to the APEC summit in Brunei. Among his summit plans are one-on-one talks with the presidents of the United States, Japan, China and South Korea.

On the eve of his departure, Putin wrote an article in the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta saying that Russia's geographic position straddling Europe and Asia could make his country a key player in the Pacific economy.

"We never forgot that the bigger part of Russian territory lies in Asia," Putin wrote. "But one should honestly say that we did not always use that advantage. I think time has come for us, along with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region to move from words to deeds," the article said.

Putin described "grandiose plans" to export energy to Japan and build pipelines to carry natural gas to China and North and South Korea.

He outlined projects including air routes over the North Pole and railroad lines across Siberia, which would make it cheaper to export goods and encourage the development of natural resources in Russia's impoverished, scarcely populated eastern regions.

Flying commercial flights over the North Pole would cut two to three hours off the circuitous routes planes make between North America and Asia, Putin said.

Canadian and Russian aviation agencies recently studied the feasibility of such flights, and concluded that the routes will save airlines hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Putin attended an APEC forum last year as prime minister, standing in for President Boris Yeltsin, who was often ill and rarely traveled in the final years of his tenure.

Putin was elected president by a landslide this spring, largely on promises of resolving Russia's dire economic woes and restoring its global clout. He has traveled the world extensively since his election.

Russia has been trying to cultivate ties with countries in Asia to counterbalance what Moscow perceives as American domination of world affairs.

"Cardinal changes in the world and the years that have passed since the end of the Cold War have indicated that in the coming millennium we will have to work for a new democratic order, against attempts to impose a unipolar world," Putin told a news conference in the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator on Tuesday.

APEC leaders are expected to discuss the thorny issue of the high price of oil, which threatens to slow economic growth in the majority of the group's economies that are net importers of energy - but has buoyed oil exporters like Russia.