Mexico interested in diversified relations with Russia - minister

MEXICO CITY, February 17 (Itar-Tass) - Mexico recognizes a big
potential of cooperation with Russia and it is ready to develop bilateral
relations in a variety of areas, Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza told a
news conference Tuesday after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov.
She said Lavrov and she had discussed the prospects for cooperation
and had agreed to impart more dynamics to it.
Espinoza pointed to a steady increase in bilateral trade, saying the
trade turnover in the past ten years has been marked by an annual growth
of around 14%.
She added that trade with Russia has almost reached $ 1 billion a year
by now.
Espinoza noted a certain slowdown in the growth last year that was due
to the economic crisis, but said Mexican officials hope this tendency will
be dealt with shortly and new prospects for growth are on the horizon.
She indicated her talks with Lavrov focused on cooperation in a number
of crucial spheres, including the energy sector, IT, pharmaceutics, and
chemical industry,
Nor did the sides leave out tourism. Espinoza said in this connection
the Mexican authorities are interested in an increase of direct chartered
flights between Moscow and the Mexican resort city of Cancun.
She expects that beginning with this September airliners with the
seating capacity of up to 300 passengers will start making two flights a
week.
The Russian-Mexican statement signed at the end of the talks
highlights the two sides' identical visioning of identical and
international problems.
-0-kle