President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Dear Mr Gaddafi! Dear
colleagues!
I would like to welcome you once again to the Kremlin and express my hope
that the continuation of our talks today will be interesting and
comradely, in other words an accurate reflection of current Russian-Libyan relations.
Today we will talk about economic issues, about coordinating certain aspects of our foreign policy and generally about all the issues that are both important and relevant for our relations. I am confident that these talks will give a new impetus to our friendly relations.
Leader of The Libyan Revolution Muammar Gaddafi: First of all we would like to express our appreciation once again for the warm welcome we’ve been given and the hospitality we’ve encountered here.
I am very pleased to meet you. We hope that this visit will allow us to raise our bilateral relations to a new level. All the more so since these relations have a long history. Unfortunately, in the past our relations were characterised mainly by military contacts and along political lines. And unfortunately there was no interaction between the so-called civilian elements of our respective populations. And in this regard the Libyan people know certain countries and foreign companies working in the civilian areas of the Libyan economy very well, but unfortunately this was not true of the Soviet Union in the past, nor for Russia in the present day.
But now the door is open for increased cooperation in the civilian economy and Russian companies have already begun to operate in various such sectors of the Libyan economy. In light of this we decided to bring a large delegation with us to discuss a number of issues relating to further deepening our investment relations and our cooperation in other areas.
Given the fact that both Libya and the Russian Federation are major producers of oil and gas, the head of our national oil company came with our delegation, and we hope that he will discuss with our Russian colleagues coordination between our two countries in this sphere. We believe the cooperation between our countries in the oil and gas sphere is particularly relevant in current circumstances, especially since we share common practical approaches to oil and gas policy.