Russian President Boris Yeltsin and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl held a "dynamic" and
saturated" meeting in the presidential residence Zavidovo outside Moscow on Sunday, Yeltsin's press service has said.
In the one-hour talks, the leaders agreed that two bilateral meetings would be held in 1998.
The first meeting will occur in spring in Germany. It will be attended by key ministers as well. Such annual meetings will last for one or two days and will be held in Germany and Russia alternately.
Highest level bilateral consultations will be held to a new formula, similar to the mechanics of consultations between Germany, Italy, France, and Bonn's other leading partners, a Russian presidential press service representative said.
The second meeting -- an informal summit -- is expected to take place on Lake Baikal during a summer weekend in 1998.
Also, Yeltsin and Kohl reiterated that the first Russian- German-French summit will be held in Yekaterinburg in the first half of 1998, in accordance with French President Jacques Chirac's wish expressed in a Council of Europe summit in Strasbourg last October.
"Presidential aides and chancellors for foreign affairs were instructed to define the exact date and the agenda of the meeting," the source told the press. From Russia, Yeltsin's spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky will supervise the preparations.
In addition, they spoke of a Yeltsin initiative to have young Russian managers trained in Germany. It was confirmed that 1,000 people would be sent to Germany in 1998. Yeltsin was quoted as backing the German's initiative that it should be "really young people and not only from Moscow."
The leaders also discussed a project for the creation of a European military transport plane based on the Russian-Ukrainian AN-70 type. They expressed satisfaction with the fact that consultations of experts will start in Berlin within two weeks.
At a news conference before departure to Berlin, Kohl said a German expert team will come to Russi ...
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