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European Union leaders to meet with Russian President Putin |
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April 8, 2000
MOSCOW, APR 7 (UNB/AP) - Chechnya was expected to be a major issue at talks Friday between two top European Union officials and President Vladimir Putin on laying the groundwork for a EU-Russia summit in May.
Jaime Gama, the foreign minister of Portugal, and Javier Solana, the union's foreign policy chief, were to meet with Putin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to formulate plans for the summit to be held in Moscow.
Putin, who took over the presidency after the resignation of Boris Yeltsin on New Year's Eve, has been trying to move Russia closer to the European Union.
However, efforts to build close ties with the EU have been overshadowed by the Russian military offensive in Chechnya and reports of human rights abuses. EU leaders have been sharply critical of what they call excessive use of force and civilian suffering in the campaign against Chechen separatists.
The meeting with Gama and Solana comes a day after the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, meeting in Strasbourg, France, lifted Russia's voting rights and proposed the suspension of Russian membership in the council over human rights violations in Chechnya.
The Council of Europe is the continent's leading human rights organization, and suspension would be a setback to expanding ties with Europe. Member nations would have to approve the suspension and a decision could take several months.
Speaker of the Russian Parliament, Gennady Seleznyov, said the council's suspension of voting rights was a mistake. "They made a historic mistake ... We will manage without, European masters," he said according to the Interfax news agency.
While Putin was still prime minister in December, Russia began seeking closer ties at an EU summit in Helsinki, Finland. It floated proposals for Russian-EU cooperation on a number of strategic issues, including military cooperation with European defense structures that Russia hopes could be an alternative to NATO.
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