Alexey Kudrin Spoke with the French about Oil
// And will continue the conversation in Moscow
The G8 Russian Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin arrived in Paris yesterday for two-day negotiations with French Finance Minister Thierry Breton on the agenda for the meeting of G8 finance ministers in Moscow February 10-11. Kudrin has already reached agreements with the top finance officials of Germany, the United States, Great Britain and Japan. Breton is a strong advocate of transparency on the oil market and advanced the topic of world oil prices and export volume from producer countries for the meetings of finance officials. That topic was first discussed at a G7 meeting last September at which Kudrin was also present. Breton and British Finance Minister Gordon Brown even made an inspection tour of oil producing countries (although they did not visit Russia) to verify that they were not hiding information.
At the same time, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Storchak is leading a meeting of deputy finance minister and ministers' representatives in Moscow to discuss the procedure for the meeting. They will discuss such technical details as the positions of the ministers at the negotiating table. It is already certain that energy problems will be the main topic of the meeting, but education and the economic aspects of fighting bird flu may also be discussed.
Even at the end of last year, some finance ministers were in favor of conducting their more familiar G7 meeting in Washington. To overcome that unwillingness, Kudrin had to making certain adjustments. The meeting in Moscow will have a double status. The Russian delegation will take part in the meeting as a full member of the G8, but will also be considered an invited guest along with delegations from India, Brazil and China. Usual there are two G8 financial discussions per year. This year, however, there will be two more discussions will expanded attendance, of which the meeting in Moscow next month will be the first.
