RIA Novosti, Russia
May 20 2005

“COLOR” REVOLUTIONS IN GEORGIA AND UKRAINE DO NOT INFLUENCE RUSSIA’S
RELATIONS WITH EU
16:01

MOSCOW, May 20 (RIA Novosti) – The change in the governing elites in
Georgia and Ukraine has not spoiled Russia’s relations with the
European Union, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Chizhov
said.

“We do not see any problem in the fact that some CIS countries
announced their intention to enter the European Union in the future,”
he said, answering the question of how real the perspective for
Russia is to find itself in isolation if the integration processes
within the EU will outstrip the process of concluding agreements
between the Russian Federation and united Europe.

Chizhov believes that in this process Russia sees “a certain
potential for deepening its cooperation both with the EU and with the
CIS republics.”

“Another thing is important: the integration processes in the West
and the East of Europe, oriented on the EU and developing in the
territory of the CIS countries, including the EurAsEC (Russia,
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), the Common European
Space (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine) and the Russian-Belarus
Inter-State Union must not compete with each other but must
supplement each other. This idea was reflected in one of the road
maps, adopted at the summit,” he said in an interview with
Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

“Our political dialogue with the European Union concerning the
situation in those countries which are our common neighbors gives a
possibility for an open exchange of opinions, ” Chizhov continued.

“Another topic is the so-called ‘frozen conflicts’ in the territory
of the CIS countries – the Transdniestrian, Karabakh,
Georgian-Abkhazian, and Georgian-Ossetian conflicts. Russia and the
European Union understand the necessity of respecting the existing
negotiation formats,” he said. (Moldova, however, proposes to expand
the existing five-sided format of the negotiations on Transdniestria
– both sides of the conflict plus Russia, Ukraine and OSCE – by
including in it the USA, Romania and the EU.)