Vike-Freiberga calls on Putin to strengthen ties

  • 2005-09-18
NEW YORK 's President Vaira Vike-Freiberga has called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to give meaning to the Latvian-Russian intergovernmental commission and strengthen cooperation between the two countries.

The two presidents sat next to each other during the breakfast hosted by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. They agreed that "dialogue between our countries is still on a rather low level of contacts," the president's foreign advisor Andrejs Pildegovics told the LNT news station on Thursday.

"It seemed in general that Putin felt positive about the need to revive this dialogue step by step," Pildegovics said.

Though created several years ago, the Latvian-Russian intergovernmental commission has been dogged by political stonewalling as Moscow continues to delay meetings due to its dissatisfaction over Latvia's minority policies.