MOSCOW, December 17 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will go on a working visit to Warsaw on December 19 at the invitation of his Polish counterpart Radoslav Sikorski, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, adding that the ministers were to chair a regular, eighth session of the Committee for the Russian-Polish Cooperation Strategy.
“The foreign ministers are due to analyse the state of bilateral relations and to specify guidelines for their further development in a number of key areas,” a Foreign Ministry official said. “They will discuss current international problems of mutual concern and the issues of better security and co-operation in Europe.”
The Committee for the Russian-Polish Cooperation Strategy, which held its last meeting in December 2012, “occupies an increasingly prominent place among other successful mechanisms and forms of dialogue existing in our relations with Poland”, the Foreign Ministry said, adding that the interdepartmental character of its work made it possible to efficiently carry out complex analysis of the situation in the key areas of bilateral co-operation - foreign policy, economy and the spheres of culture and education.
“The forthcoming discussions will also include a set of measures aimed to expand innovation and infrastructure projects as well as to strengthen ties between small and medium-sized enterprises, and to promote further co-operation of the two countries’ businesses,” the ministry noted. “The Russian side is not going to evade some problem issues, including granting the most favored nation treatment to mutual investments and providing Russian economic operators with non-discriminatory conditions of work on the Polish market.”
“Poland remains one of Russia’s most important partners in Central and Eastern Europe,” the spokesman said. “We attach great importance to the implementation of the July 2012 intergovernmental agreement on local cross-border movement.”
“Tens of thousands of citizens in Russia’s Kaliningrad region and neighboring Poland’s provinces have already used the simplified border-crossing regime,” he added. “This positive experience should facilitate future transition to visa-free regime in general for citizens of Russia and the EU member-states.