Saturday 4 December 2010

How to do it

President Dmitry Medvedev called the Wikileakage  a display of cynical speculations whose publication  “can be harmful to foreign political relations because. ... They show how the cynicism of  such assessments and speculations weigh on the policies of some countries, and here I mean the United States. ...But I do not see anything critically important.  ... Moreover  speculations and assessments can differ. ... If some of the assessments made by  the Russian Foreign Ministry,  or the Russian security services had  leaked in the mass media, particularly of our U.S. partners, they wouldn't  have been very pleased either,” Medvedev added.

“But do we need this? Diplomacy is a discreet matter , as is  banking, which should be conducted  on similar   principles,” the Russian president underlined. 

The Russian president  made the statement after  bi-lateral state consultations with the Italian Prime Minister at a  meeting in Krasnaya Polyana, the mountain resort outside Sochi.  

Considering what they were discussing, first in their tete-a-tete meeting -  the Russia-NATO summit results, the OSCE summit in Kazakhstan, the upcoming Russia-EU summit in Brussels, and G20 issues, and the fact that  “The parties may also discuss Afghanistan and the Iranian nuclear program,”  - and then in the broader format including the ministers of Foreign affairs,  Defence, Industry,  Energy, and  Communications - will be  'working on a number of documents including: an executive intergovernmental protocol  on a visa-free regime with the European Union;   a number of commercial agreements are  to be signed at the consultations, including Russia’s Vnesheconombank to sign an agreement with Italian partners on cooperation in funding small and medium-sized businesses; and a framework agreement  to be signed between the two countries’ postal services. - it's unsurprising Wikileaks is regarded merely as an irritation and an example of how  inappropriate was the US way of conducting its diplomatic relations.
 
A presidential aide remarked. “This will be the seventh round of extended consultations. We consider interstate consultations as one of the basic elements of bilateral trade and economic and research and technological cooperation.”  And not vulnerable to internet publication either.

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