European Union states finally agreed on Wednesday on a mandate for launching partnership talks with Russia after satisfying Lithuania's concerns about so-called "frozen conflicts" on Russia's borders.
A deal ending 18 months of objections by former Soviet satellites was clinched at a meeting of EU ambassadors and will be rubber-stamped by foreign ministers next Monday, EU President Slovenia said. It means that the 27-member bloc should be in a position to launch wide-ranging talks on energy, political and other ties with Moscow by a June 26-27 EU-Russia summit in Siberia.
"This is an important step," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel told a news conference in Ljubljana. "The important thing is that we have the agreement of all members to adopt the mandate while problematic questions will still be a matter of (the partnership) talks," he said of the EU's complex ties with a vital supplier of energy to the bloc.
Poland first vetoed the adoption of the mandate in November 2006 after Russia banned imports of fresh meat and other food products from Warsaw, lifting its objection earlier this year after Moscow removed the embargo.
Lithuania held up agreement on a range of issues including Russian oil supplies, judicial cooperation and, more recently, Moscow's role in separatist disputes in some former Soviet republics, in particular Georgia and Moldova. Diplomats said Vilnius agreed to the text after an annex was included stating the EU's intention to watch the situation there closely and provide its help as needed.
"All Lithuania's concerns were taken into account," said Lithuanian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Violeta Gaizauskaite. A senior Lithuanian diplomat said Vilnius would continue to insist on the need for settlement of the longstanding conflicts in Georgia and Moldova during talks with Russia.
"The negotiations with Russia are going to be long and tough," the diplomat added. The text of the mandate was not immediately available, but a second EU diplomat said the revisions made to the mandate to address Lithuanian concerns had not resulted in any "new conditionality" to future negotiations with Moscow.
The struggle to agree the mandate highlighted the split between western European capitals which stress the need for solid economic ties with Russia and the mostly ex-communist eastern states which want the EU to be firmer in dealing with Moscow. The Siberia summit will be the EU's first encounter with President Dmitry Medvedev, and there is guarded optimism in the bloc that he will take a different tack from his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. Many in the bloc accused Putin of trying to use "divide-and-rule" tactics in dealing with the EU.