Translated material
Eastern Summit
Putin and Bush will meet under socialism
Tomorrow morning, Moscow time, will be very early for Vladimir Putin, who will meet him in the capital of socialist Vietnam. The 14th meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will open there tomorrow, in which leaders of twenty-one world economies will take part. That’s right - “economies”, not “states”, since Taiwan and Hong Kong participating in APEC are not recognized by the world community as full-fledged states and are not members of the UN, in particular, due to the position of Beijing, which insists on the principle of “one Chinese state” . Russia joined APEC in 1998, and the Russian president has been participating in the forums since 1999.At the same time as political leaders, the business elite of the vast region is coming to Hanoi; the APEC Business Summit will be held there on November 17-18. The landing force of Russian businessmen landing in Vietnam is led by Oleg Deripaska. The head of Basic Element, one of three Russian representatives (besides him, Deputy Chairman of Gazprom Alexander Medvedev and the head of Vneshtorgbank Andrey Kostin) on the APEC Business Advisory Council (BAC), will be next to Putin during the so-called Dialogue of Economic Leaders with BAC members .
The protocol program of the two-day summit looks very rich. In addition to meeting with businessmen, the leaders meet with each other twice behind closed doors, once in a limited format. In addition, on Sunday there will be a working breakfast, which will actually become a continuation of closed meetings. All this, not counting the cultural program and the time-consuming dressing of the leaders in national costumes (for this, the organizers take measurements of each VIP participant long before the summit) of the host country of the summit and ceremonial photography. In addition, we still need to find time for bilateral meetings, which are usually no less important than the reason for holding them. It is known that Putin will have at least four such rendezvous - with the leaders of Japan, China, South Korea and, of course, with the US President.
This meeting has already been announced so widely that, obviously, colleagues will expect a story from the Russian President about the results of Russian-American negotiations on accession to the WTO. The joint statement by Putin and Bush on this issue is expected to be one of the main hits of the Hanoi summit.
According to Vremya Novostei, the Russian delegation does not expect any surprises, including unpleasant ones, from the meeting in the Vietnamese capital. The forum's motto, as always, looks very vague. - “Towards a vibrant community for sustainable development and prosperity.” This makes it possible to discuss a wide variety of topics. Each leader is given the opportunity to speak for no more than 5-6 minutes at each of the two two-hour meetings.
The only item on the agenda on which, as VN has learned, a lively discussion is possible is the initiative put forward by Australia to restructure the APEC forum. Canberra proposes to create the institution of an “independent” head of the Secretariat, who in the future would have the opportunity to formulate a certain political direction in the ongoing work of APEC. Moscow sees this idea as a threat to undermine the fundamental principles of APEC - consensus and voluntariness. In this regard, Russia has already found a number of allies, together with whom it will apparently propose to recognize the Australian idea as counterproductive.
Moscow is also ready for renewed attempts by the United States and Japan to create a new front of pressure on North Korea in connection with its withdrawal from the nonproliferation regime.
But the main theses with which the Russian president will address his colleagues in the Asia-Pacific region (APR) will remain largely unchanged compared to last year’s APEC meeting in Busan, South Korea. This is ensuring energy security in the Asia-Pacific region, countering international terrorism, preventing natural and man-made disasters, eliminating their consequences, and combating infectious diseases. The Russians can report in Hanoi on the increase in the effectiveness of their participation in APEC structures over the past year; a month ago, a meeting of the APEC working group on energy was held in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk; centers in various areas of APEC cooperation are being created in Russia. At the end of the summit on Monday, the program of Vladimir Putin’s official visit to Vietnam will begin.