President Vladimir Putin: Mrs Chancellor, allow me to wish you a warm welcome to Moscow in your capacity as head of government of the Federal Republic of Germany.
I recall our last meeting in Berlin. At that time you laid out your position regarding the development of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Russian Federation.
I would like to say that our bilateral relations have been just as strong as ever over this time. Our foreign ministries are working very actively with each other, discussing foreign policy matters and coordinating our actions. We have set a new record in our bilateral trade and economic relations with a bilateral trade result of more than $32 billion in 2005. We are now preparing for a major intergovernmental meeting in Siberia, in Tomsk, where we will discuss in more detail our economic cooperation plans for the upcoming future (I think that our foreign ministries have agreed to hold this major event in April).
I hope we will also have the opportunity to make use of what I think is one of the biggest cultural events in Europe – the 800th anniversary of Dresden – to work on promising cultural and humanitarian cooperation plans.
Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel (back translation from German through Russian): Thank you very much for the opportunity to make this visit. I also remember well our last meeting at the Russian embassy in Berlin and the detailed dialogue we had in September. I think that we have laid a good foundation for continuing to develop our partnership.
There are a whole number of bilateral issues that we can discuss today and in Tomsk in April.
There are also international matters linked to your presidency of the G-8, and then we also need to exchange views and opinions on international conflicts.
While preparing for this visit I also looked over our economic relations. We really do see very impressive trends underway in this area, for example as regards real exchange of goods. I think that in this area too we have the opportunity to examine a whole series of matters.
I am grateful for this meeting and I am happy to be here again in Moscow.