OREANDA-NEWS. November 15, 2010. Dmitry Medvedev met with US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the APEC Summit.

The two presidents discussed economic and security cooperation, prospects for Russia’s accession to the WTO, the upcoming NATO-Russia summit in Lisbon, and current international issues.

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PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: I want to say what a pleasure it was to meet and discuss a whole range of bilateral and multilateral matters with my colleague, President of the United States of America Barack Obama. 

We do indeed have very good relations and understand each other well. This is important for reaching agreement on many different issues, and we are never short of topics to address. We started with our bilateral relations. We have made serious progress of late on the subject of Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organisation.

I think that credit here goes to the President of the United States’ team, which has implemented all of the agreements reached during my visit to Washington. I hope that this process will continue and that Russia will join the WTO soon. 

Regarding other topics, we reviewed regional issues of course, and international issues. One of the main subjects we spoke about was the meeting that will take place in Lisbon soon, where the upcoming NATO-Russia summit is to be held.

We see an improvement in relations between Russia and NATO, and this is useful for all sides. We are engaged in discussion on a number of matters now, including the idea of a European ABM system.

We exchanged views on what steps we think could be taken in this area, and agreed to instruct our aides and ministers to continue advancing in this direction. This is an issue that we will discuss at the summit itself too.

Besides, we have been cooperating productively within various regional forums, and in the G20, and will continue to do so, as this helps us to resolve international problems and achieve our goals, despite the substantial difficulties our economies still face.

I know that my friend Barack Obama is working on this day and night, and I wish him success in this endeavour, because the American economy’s health has such a major impact on the state of the global economy.

We addressed the main international challenges too, of course. They remain unchanged, and we agreed to continue coordinating our efforts in these areas. We will keep cooperating as closely and actively on these issues as we have been doing of late.