Russia, UN to cooperate to prepare St. Petersburg G8 summit – Sergei Lavrov

March 8

Russia and the United Nations will join forces to prepare the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on March 8 after a meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

“We supported the idea of the UN Secretary General attending certain functions during preparations for the St. Petersburg summit, in particular the World Congress of Religious Leaders in St. Petersburg in June 2006, to which Russia’s Patriarch has invited the UN leadership,” the minister said.

Lavrov also said that he and Annan had discussed key issues on the international agenda. We discussed the situation in the Middle East, notably relations between Palestine and Israel and the tasks “all of us set to the Hamas [radical Islamic] movement after it has won the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Assembly,” the minister said.

He said that other issues on the agenda of his meeting with the UN Secretary General included the situation in Iran, the Kosovo settlement, and Syria-Lebanon relations.

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