OREANDA-NEWS. November 03, 2010.Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov conversed with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway Jonas Gahr Store on the sidelines of the Second Ministerial Meeting of the Northern Dimension in Oslo on November 1.

The two parties examined key issues in advancing good-neighborly Russian-Norwegian relations from the viewpoint of the implementation of the accords reached by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Norway’s Prime Minister Jen Stoltenberg in Oslo on April 27, 2010, and in Murmansk on September 15, 2010. They also discussed the tasks in the deepening of political dialogue and trade and economic cooperation, along with the establishment of a partnership for modernization, collaborative efforts in key sectoral areas and interaction on the Spitsbergen archipelago.

Considerable attention was paid to cooperation in the Russia-Norway border area and in the North as a whole, particularly in light of the upcoming realization of the Treaty on Maritime Delimitation and Cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic, signed in September 2010.

An exchange of views took place on cooperation with Norway in the North and the Arctic – within the framework of the Arctic Council and other regional formats – on European security issues; Russia-NATO relations, including preparations for a RNC Lisbon summit; devising NATO’s new strategic concept; questions of the OSCE and its upcoming summit in Astana; as well as on a number of regional problems, including the Middle East peace process, and the situation in Afghanistan and Sudan.

The Ministers signed an Intergovernmental Agreement on the Facilitation of Mutual Travel for Border Area Residents of Russia and Norway, and a Joint Statement on Strengthening Cross-Border Cooperation.