Putin: Russia, China respect each other

Russia has nothing to fear from China and some worries that millions of Chinese will some day occupy vast swathes of Russian territory in the Far East are just overblown, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday.

"There is no threat on the side of China. We have been neighbors for hundreds of years. We know how to respect each other," Putin told an annual meeting of world experts on Russia known as the Valdai Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

"China does not have to populate the Far East to get what it needs - natural resources. We deliver oil and gas. There are huge coal reserves near the Chinese border. China does not want to aggravate the situation with us," Putin said.

Putin opened a pipeline in August to carry Siberian oil to China and Moscow is keen to diversify its client base away from dependence on Europe by sell more oil, gas and metals to China.

Putin said the development of Eastern Siberia and the Far East was a priority for Russia and that he hoped cooperation with China would deepen in the coming years.

"It is no secret that this is an enormous territory, an under populated territory which has massive potential," Putin said.

Speaking at the same occasion, Putin said he had not yet decided to run for the Russian presidency but noted that Franklin D. Roosevelt had served four terms as US president.

Speculation is rife over whether Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev will stand in the 2012 presidential polls and Putin pledged that neither he nor the current president would do anything against the Russian constitution.

"There was an American president -- Roosevelt -- who was elected four times in a row because the law allowed it,” Putin said.

Roosevelt served an unprecedented four terms as US president from 1933-1945, spanning the Great Depression to World War II, and dying just before the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.
Putin ruled Russia as president for the maximum two consecutive terms allowed by the constitution from 2000-2008 and then handed over to Medvedev.

After a four-year break from the Kremlin, there is nothing to stop Putin standing for another two presidential terms.

"Neither me nor President Medvedev will do anything that runs counter to the basic law, the constitution of Russia," Putin said during a two and a half hour dinner with the group in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

"We have talked about what we will do in 2011 or at the start of 2012 several times. We will act according to the real situation in the country, from what we have done, from the mood of the country," said Putin.

Putin suggested that his relationship with Medvedev was far easier to manage than that in Britain's new governing coalition.

"Medvedev and I have been together for 20 years. We have been to the same university and we have the same attitude toward the development of the country. It is quite easy for us to cooperate. I see hardship for your government," he told a British journalist.

"It is too early to speak about this, though," Putin said. "We must do our jobs. Each of us is doing our job and in my view we are doing it effectively."

Both Putin, 57, and Medvedev, 44, have suggested that one of them will run for president in 2012, and that they will agree in advance which one it will be.

When pressed on the long-term dangers of concentrating power in one person's hands, Putin said he wanted to create a "balanced" political system.

"We need people to understand that there is nothing wrong with constitutional changes of power. But that will take time," Putin said. "I agree that it is wrong for just one person to hold all the power. That is why I chose to share with President Medvedev."

Source: People's Daily Online / Agencies