Medvedev to meet Ahmadinejad and Karzai in Astana.

ASTANA, June 15 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who
arrived in Astana on Tuesday to attend a summit meeting of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), will hold a number of bilateral meetings
on Wednesday. Thus, he will meet with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai
and is likely to have a meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters.
"During the summit the Russian president traditionally holds meetings
with heads of delegations of the SCO member states as well as with
representatives of observer states," he said.
"I do not rule out a meeting with Ahmadinejad," he said adding that
"the format has not been defined yet."
Medvedev said on June 6 he would soon meet with Iran's president and
promised that the issue of modernizing Russian-Iranian relations will be
raised.
Last time Medvedev and Ahmadinejad met in Baku on November 18, 2010,
on the sidelines of the summit of the Caspian littoral states. They
focused on Iran's nuclear problem.
At a meeting with the Afghan president, Prikhodko said, the sides will
discuss the implementation of large-scale joint projects.
Last time the Russian and Afghan leaders met in Moscow in January.
"The upcoming contacts between Medvedev and Karzai are a good
opportunity for synchronizing watches on the current state of bilateral
relations," the presidential aide said.
During the talks the presidents "will exchange opinions on the
priorities of trade and economic relations focusing on the implementation
of large-scale joint projects to restore and modernize Afghanistan's
infrastructure," he said. In his words, "the intergovernmental agreement
on trade and economic cooperation that was signed in January and in
particular envisages the creation of an intergovernmental commission
provided a good groundwork for boosting joint efforts in this direction."
In April, the candidacy of Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko was approved
as a co-chair of the intergovernmental commission. "It is expected that an
intergovernmental commission on the commission's creation will be signed
soon," he said.
"The huge attention Russia pays to the development of Russian-Afghan
relations was reflected in the Russian president's initiative to introduce
the post of a special envoy to Afghanistan," Prikhodko said, adding that
the director of the Foreign Ministry's second Asian department, Zamir
Kabulov, was appointed to this post.
The Kremlin's aide believes "the effectiveness of joint efforts is
proved by an ascending bilateral trade trend registered of late." In the
first three months of 2011, trade turnover went up by almost 60 percent on
the same period last year to reach 150 million U.S. dollars.
"Another important subject for discussion will be cooperation in the
area of the humanities," Prikhodko noted. He reiterated that Russia
traditionally provides assistance to Afghanistan in personnel training. An
annual free-of-charge quota for training Afghan students in Russia's
higher educational institutions was increased to 115 seats in the
2011-2012 academic year. During this academic year over 400 students from
Afghanistan are studying at Russia's universities, studies of 350 students
are financed from the federal budget.
The two countries also decided to restore the former house of Soviet
science and culture in Kabul to build on its basis the Russian centre of
science and culture.