Italy, Russia leaders to discuss Iran’s nuke programme

ITALY: Iran’s contentious nuclear programme and Kosovo are among the items to be discussed at Wednesday’s meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Premier Romano Prodi in the Adriatic port city of Bari.

The summit - the fourth time the two leaders meet - also will have a strong focus on business deals as the two countries move to further improve their economic ties. With a trade turnover of more than euro20 billion (US$26.44 billion), Italy is Russia’s third commercial partner after Germany and China.

But the meeting comes amid repeated accusations that Russia’s human rights record has deteriorated under Putin’s tenure. Members of Prodi’s center-left coalition called on the premier Tuesday to address allegations of human rights violations, including attacks on journalists who write about official corruption, Chechnya and other sensitive issues.

“Nothing has been clarified or even reported about the deaths of some journalists who have repeatedly denounced the massacre of Chechens by Russian soldiers,” the Radical Party said in a statement.

Investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, a Kremlin critic, was shot dead in Moscow in October, and the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said 13 journalists have been killed in contract-style murders since Putin took office in 2000.

“Is Putin the creator of an unfolding democratization where democracy never existed before, or is his administration a barely disguised dictatorship?” political analyst Franco Venturini wrote in Tuesday’s editions of Corriere della Sera daily. But Putin also has re-established Russia as an economic and political powerhouse, and “the West finds itself prisoner of a constant dilemma between values and needs,” Venturini said.

“Dialogue with all sides involved and a collective effort of the international community ... are the way to a solution to these crises,” Prodi said.

“Italy, along with Russia, is convinced of the need for such an approach to the principal crisis areas: in the Middle East, in Iraq, the Iranian nuclear dossier, in Afghanistan.” Russia has been reluctant to impose tough new sanctions on Iran, but has been moving close to an agreement with the United States and three European nations - Germany, Britain and France - on a new package of measures against the Persian country.

Prodi’s office said Russia and Italy also were to discuss the future of the Kosovo province as the European Union is preparing to enforce a U.N. plan that gives supervised statehood to Kosovo, even though Serbia has rejected giving so much autonomy to its breakaway province.

The Security Council is split on the issue, with Russia supporting Serbia, and the United States and EU backing the U.N. plan.

Wednesday’s summit comes a day after Putin met with Pope Benedict XVI in the highest-level Kremlin-Vatican talks in more than three years that focused on ways to ease tension between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

Bari is home to the relics of St. Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century saint popular among both Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and Russian pilgrims travel there.

BARI, Italy (AP)