The Spanish newspaper El Pais published facsimiles of the protocol of a meeting of European leader devoted to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Photo: Àðõèâíîå ôîòî
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EU Summit Back in the News
// Russia strategy found in a garbage can
The Spanish Interviu magazine has published secret documents journalists found in the garbage can at the Spanish Foreign Ministry. One of them describes how European Union leaders tried to find a joint strategy to apply pressure on Russian president Vladimir Putin. Kommersant's Spanish correspondent Juan Cobo reports.
The Spanish Foreign Ministry had personnel who are responsible for destroying documents with sensitive information. Nonetheless, sacks of papers are carried out of the building every morning at 7:30, placed in bins marked “Spanish Foreign Ministry” and hauled away. There is a guard station nearby. The weekly magazine Interviu devoted six pages to the documents, marked “secret,” “confidential” and “strictly confidential,” that its reporters found in the Foreign Ministry garbage. They included correspondence of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero with other EU leader, correspondence from the royal palace, to the Spanish Defense Ministry and general staff, financial documents concerning NATO, reports from Spanish ambassadors in various countries, analyses of the situations in Cuba and Afghanistan, receipts diplomat's expense accounts and more.
Some of the documents concern Russia, including the protocol from a closed meeting of EU leaders and leaders of EU member states before there meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the recent summit in Lahti, Finland. Interviu did not publish that text in full, but gave the document to Spain's largest newspaper El Pais, which stated that the document describes efforts to take a joint stand in relation to Putin because of “Moscow's political use of the excessive dependence of the European countries in the area of energy.”
Matti Vanhanen, prime minister of Finland, which is chairing the EU this half year, stated at the meeting that the EU leaders had to express their united desire that Russia ratify the Energy Charter and discuss ecology, human right and freedom of speech in Russia and Russian-Georgian relations with Putin. Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus express concern about Georgia and Chechnya.
European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso urged the Eastern European leaders to maintain calm when talking to the Russian President and French President Jacques Chirac noted that “Security and stability in Europe depend to a significant extent on Russia.” They decided to raise these issues at their dinner with Putin.
Both Putin and the European leaders took hard-line positions at that dinner and exchanged unflattering observations about corruption. The Spanish newspaper characterized the European leaders' strategic united position as a “failure.”
Juan Cobo
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 13, 2006
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