Russia should focus on trade with promising partners in APR - FM.

14/9 Tass 330

MOSCOW, September 14 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia should focus on building up
preferential trading relations with the most promising partners in the
Asia-Pacific Region, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin, who
oversees the region's affairs at the Foreign Ministry, said in an
interview.
"At this stage it will make sense to look into several options of
cooperation in this field and to start with relatively easier counterparts
- New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam," the senior Russian diplomat told
International Affairs magazine.
"Russia needs to take root in regional integration with its eastern
regions, which are an integral part of the APR," he said. "The success of
this mega-project will be directly dependent on how fast Siberia and the
Far East will be modernized into an innovative economy with competitive
industries and a favorable investment climate and diversified foreign
economic relations," Borodavkin believes.
"Russia with its rich hydrocarbon resources and advanced technologies
in the oil and gas industry, electric power and the nuclear power plants
has already played a significant role in ensuring energy security in the
Asia-Pacific Region," the diplomat said. "A confirmation of this is seen
in the laying of the trunk oil pipeline from Eastern Siberia to the
Pacific Ocean, the implementation of gas projects off Sakhalin, and the
ambitious program to promote nuclear power in the region."
Measures to improve transport infrastructures in Russia's Far East, he
said, "mate well with the development of transport systems in neighboring
countries."
"Together with the Chinese, Korean and Japanese partners work is in
progress on transcontinental routes with the use of the Trans-Siberian
Railway and the Arctic Sea Route, which may prove the shortest links
between the Asia-Pacific Region, on one hand, and Europe and the Middle
East, on the other."
"With its great energy and transport capacity Russia is ready to make
a significant contribution to solving these problems," he said. "We have
everything we need to take a worthy place in the emerging new architecture
of regional cooperation."

-0-str