Britain's Tony Blair on Monday won Russia's support at the start of a mission to pave the way for agreements on tackling African poverty and climate change at the Group of Eight summit. Blair, who met Russian President Vladimir Putin near Moscow and was travelling on to Germany, said though there was a real prospect of progress before next month's G8 gathering in Scotland, there was "obviously a lot of hard negotiating to do".
"We will wait and see, but I am reasonably happy with the progress so far," Blair told reporters. He said an agreement by G8 finance ministers to write off more than $40 billion of poor countries' debts was a good omen.
The Kremlin leader was the first of four European leaders whom Blair was due to meet in a two-day trip to prepare for the gathering of G8 nations at the Gleneagles country hotel in Scotland from July 6-8.
"We fully support the ideas of the British leadership and in particular of the prime minister ... for the forthcoming summit," Putin said at a joint news conference at his country residence west of Moscow.
Some politicians in Europe and the United States have demanded Russian exclusion from the club of eight industrialised democracies, saying it is not rich or democratic enough to hang on to its membership.
But Putin defended Russia's place, saying it understood the problems of "transition economies".
It was not clear whether Blair had pressed Putin over human rights or brought up the fraud conviction of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose trial British officials say has hurt investment in Russia.
But Putin, asked by a reporter, said: "We know about these (human rights) criticisms, especially surrounding the Chechen events, just as criticism about Britain used to be heard in terms of Northern Ireland. "We are opposed to the use of these issues for interfering in our internal affairs or as a tool for achieving foreign policy objectives."
Putin, who often miscues publicly by using exotic language, reacted sharply when a reporter linked human rights abuses and corruption in Africa with the situation in Russia.
"We know that in some African countries there was a practice of eating political opponents. We not have such a tradition or culture and I think a comparison between Africa and Russia is not quite fair," he said.
Blair was to dine with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder later on Monday in Berlin.
While the trip is ostensibly to prepare for the G8 meeting, British officials acknowledge that there will inevitably be discussion of the EU budget and of the fate of the EU constitution - rejected by French and Dutch voters - when Blair visits Germany and then France and Luxembourg.
Schroeder has said all sides must compromise if EU leaders are to reach a deal on the bloc's 2007-2013 budget framework at a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.
Britain and France are locked in an increasingly bitter row over the rebate that Britain receives from EU coffers, which was worth 5.3 billion euros ($6.4 billion) last year.
Blair insisted on Monday that Britain would stand by its position and that the rebate could be discussed only as part of a broader debate on EU financing.
"Our position on the future financing of the EU remains as it has been set out very, very clearly," he said.
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