In The 1990s And Early 2000s, There

One Has To Be Insincere And Promise Something Which You Cannot Fulfill. So You Either Have To Be A Fool Who Does Not Understand What You Are Promising, Or Deliberately Be Lying.

Looking At The Map Of The Russian Federation, One Can See A Country Covering Mostly Northern Areas; Today More Than 70 Percent Of Our Territory Is Or Can Be Referred To As Northern, If Not The Far North. We Have A Rather Small Warm Black Sea Strip In The South And - To Tell The Truth - Quite A Few Regions With A Hospitable Warm Climate.

We All Are Interested In An Open Development, Without Any Prejudice; This Refers Particularly And, Perhaps, Primarily To The Baltic Countries, For Them It Is More Important Than For Russia.

We Discussed This Very Important Issue Yesterday Over A Beer.

We Have Very Close Humanitarian Contacts [with China], Wide-ranging Youth Exchanges, Educational And Regional Contacts, And All Of Them Continue To Develop.