President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Mrs President, Argentine colleagues,
We are very pleased that you have come to Moscow and that we have this opportunity to discuss all different areas of Russian-Argentine cooperation with you.
We just discussed a number of topical issues, issues that we discussed earlier in Washington, namely, the problems caused by the financial crisis. We discussed the situation in the world and the need to make the transition to a multipolar world and put in place the new security architecture and new financial architecture that are so needed in the world today.
We discussed the prospects for developing Russian-Argentine relations and have seen that the outlook is excellent indeed. All we need to do is put in the effort and give the right impetus to our relations, and this is just what your visit to the Russian Federation will help to do.
I want to say once again that I am sure your visit will be a success and will result not just in the signature of a whole number of very important documents but will also lead to new agreements.
Overall, we are happy with the way relations between our countries are developing. We are happy with the pace of trade growth and with the cooperation in different sectors that has developed over these last years, but we think nonetheless that there is still much to do.
We talked about areas such as the dialogue between our business communities, which can make a contribution to developing our relations. We also spoke about our cooperation in agriculture, the energy sector, peaceful nuclear energy, space exploration and a whole number of other sectors that are relevant for the development of relations between our countries.
We should not forget relations between our countries’ regions too. Present here are governors of Argentina’s different provinces. Cooperation at regional level is a good thing. This is the level at which real relations between people can be built, and this is where the most important projects are carried out.
Finally, I think it is very important to continue developing our humanitarian and cultural cooperation. These are also key areas of our relations.
Mrs President, I want to welcome you to the Kremlin once more, and I now give you the floor.
President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (translated from Russian): Thank you very much, Mr President.
We can indeed say that this visit is a success. Yesterday, our business community representatives met with members of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. They discussed different issues and held a number of meetings that were an overall success.
As you rightly noted, we should not only deepen our growing trade relations but also need to multiply our efforts in other areas such as peaceful nuclear energy and the space sector, and expand our cooperation in biotechnology, agriculture and bio-pharmaceuticals. This is all part of trade and economic relations, which are very important in order to generate prosperity and create jobs.
I think that we should also deepen our political dialogue and our cooperation on the international stage, above all because Russia and Argentina both believe (as we already confirmed at the G-20 meeting in Washington) in the need to build a multipolar and more multilateral world. We see without any doubt that the single-polar world that emerged in 1989 has not brought positive results for other countries, neither in terms of security nor in the economy.
The time is not simply ripe now to reform the international organisations and international rules in politics and the economy (as Russia and Argentina have both been saying); the need for reform is clear for the entire world today, and those who have been democratically elected to power in our countries must take upon themselves the responsibility for carrying out this policy in all international forums.