PARIS, November 27 (Itar-Tass) — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a press conference in Paris on Tuesday that Russia would not give up keeping the euro in its foreign currency reserves and that Russia wishes the European Union soonest settlement of its economic problems. "Today, a piece of good news in respect to settlement of the Greek debt has come. We hope it will be a full and final settlement," Medvedev said in a reply to a question asked by Itar-Tass at the press conference.
"The Russian Federation and the Russian government wish every success to the European Union as well as the states which belong to the euro zone and hope that the situation will stabilize. We are really very close partners, and Russia really has 42 percent of its foreign currency reserves nominated in euro. This is quite a large sum because Russia's foreign currency reserves are large," Medvedev explained.
"We are not going to revise things because we have confidence in the strength of an absolute majority of the economies which belong to the euro zone," Medvedev said. “Nevertheless, problems do exist and these problems must be settled as soon as possible," Medvedev stressed.
He reminded of his own words he said four years ago when the world economic crisis broke out:“It was good luck that the world faced another crisis in a situation when we have not only the dollar, but also another very strong reserve currency -the euro, which cannot be lost because if we face more crises with one or two reserve currencies involved such a situation might pose a threat to the strength of the whole economic construction, the whole world economic order.”
"We do not change our plans and wish our colleagues from the European Union to cope with these problems as soon as possible," the Russian prime minister said.