Russia's Lavrov, govt officials, business execs to discuss Baltic region.

MOSCOW, October 26 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov is expected to chair a meeting of the Business Council that will
focus on an issue formulated as "Public and Private Partnership in the
Baltic Sea Region: Towards a Joint Solution to the Crisis."
According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko, "the
participants are senior representatives of Russia's federal parliament,
regional authorities of northwest regions, the decision-makers from the
Economic Development Ministry, Ministry of Regional Development, Ministry
of Environment and Ministry of Finance, the leading business associations,
and CEOs of major Russian companies operating in the Baltic region, such
as Gazprom, Lukoil, Nord Stream, Vnesheconombank, INTER RAO UES, Rosatom,
RZD (Russian Railways), and Rosneft.
"The participants are expected to determine the best ways to approach
the task of uniting the efforts of state and private capital in the Baltic
Sea region to accelerate the process of overcoming the financial crisis,"
Nesterenko continued. "They will evaluate the existing experience of
partnership and will exchange views on how to take advantage of
public-private partnership to modernize the Russian economy and transfer
it to the path of innovative development. "
"All these issues will be considered through the prism of enacting the
potential of regional cooperation formats, primarily the Council of Baltic
Sea States, for developing the foundations of a common space of
public-private partnership covering the entire region," he said in
conclusion.
The Council of the Baltic Sea includes Denmark, Germany, Latvia,
Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, and European
Commission. It is an intergovernmental organization established in March
1992 and aiming to promote comprehensive cooperation between the countries
of the region. Senior Officials Committee is a permanent working body of
the Council.

.Russia to hand over to Italy remains of 121 WW II soldiers.

MOSCOW, October 26 (Itar-Tass) - A special ceremony is to be held at
the Chkalovsky airdrome near Moscow Tuesday, in the course of which the
remains of 121 Italian soldiers, who died on the Eastern front during
World War II, will be turned over to the Italian side, Vladimir
Drobyshevsky, an official spokesman for Department of Installations and
Logistics of the Russian Armed Forces told Itar-Tass.
"This ceremony will continue the tradition of handovers of the Italian
soldiers' remains that emerged in 1991," Drobyshevsky said. "This will be
the 18th such ceremony and the ninth one held at the Chkalovsky airdrome."
"The remains of 10,542 servicemen were sent back home from 1991
through 2010, and the names of 2,799 of them have been identified," he
said. "This year we're sending back to Italy the remains of 121 more
soldiers that were exhumed in the Belgorod and Rostov regions."
"The personal identification ensignia of six of them have been found,"
Drobyshevsky said. "They make it possible to establish their names and to
find out their relatives."
This brings the total of the Italian soldiers' bodies exhumed to date
to 10,663, with 2,807 names established.
Ambassador Vittorio Claudio Surdo will lead the Italian delegation at
the ceremony. The list of officials on the Russian side who are expected
to take part includes Vice Admiral Yuri Kvyatkovsky, the director of the
State Military Historical and Cultural Center reporting to the Russian
government, the director general of the Association of International
Cooperation at War Memorials, Yevgeny Pilyayev, and the chief of the
Defense Ministry's department for commemorating the servicemen who fell
for the homeland, Alexander Kirilin.
-0-kle


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